


Through the Wormhole

by performativezippers



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Danvers Sisters, Deep Space Nine - Freeform, F/F, IN SPACE!, Major Sawyer Maggie, Mysterious Alex, Resistance fighter Maggie, Sanvers - Freeform, Sanvers in space, Some Action, Space Dad, The Sanvers Star Trek AU that no one but me wanted, Trill Lena Luthor, You know I can't resist mysterious Alex y'all, some feelings, when you know you know
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-16
Updated: 2020-10-16
Packaged: 2021-03-07 23:15:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 27,673
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26961997
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/performativezippers/pseuds/performativezippers
Summary: “Rerouting all power from life support to the engines,” Alex calls. Kara doesn’t even bother to protest. Rerouting power from life support is Alex’s favorite move.It’s risky, but it pays off. They shoot forward and, by Alex’s count, four seconds before they’re back in weapons’ range, the wormhole opens in front of them.
Relationships: Alex Danvers/Maggie Sawyer
Comments: 671
Kudos: 197
Collections: Sanvers Big Bang | 2020





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome to my Sanvers Big Bang! Huge thanks to the organizers of this great event pushing us all to generate lots of longform fics for our fandom.
> 
> BIGGEST, MOST IMMENSE SHOUT TO [@IronicPotential](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ironicpotential/pseuds/ironicpotential), who created not one, not two, but literally NINE incredible illustrations for this piece. I'm obsessed with them, and I'm sure you will be too. They are SO WONDERFUL AND MAKE ME SO HAPPY. They're all embedded here at the appropriate point in the story, and you can also find them [here!](https://t.co/0cIKwAI5U9?amp=1)  
> Send her love; they are magnificent.
> 
> Also shout to those who gave me great naming suggestions that I did not take:  
> My wife: Shallow Object 6  
> Roadie: Gay Aliens in Space  
> Brin: Bang! It's Big!
> 
> \-----
> 
> It is my great hope and fervent wish that this story will make perfect sense to you if you're one of the many humans who has never consumed a Star Trek. I did my very best to make this accessible, despite choosing such a specific second canon for no good reason. 
> 
> If you're a trekkie: (1) please forgive some exposition; (2) I imagine this to be set around the start of season 3 of DS9 but I stole some stuff from later seasons, don't @ me; (3) live long and prosper.

“Alex, don’t. We don’t know where it goes.”

But Alex’s fingers don’t stop flying over the controls. They’re old school controls, not the sleek buttons she’d once been so familiar with. She’s performing evasive maneuvers with both hands and both knees, accelerating and decelerating with flicks of her wrist and slams of her feet.

Flying this ship is full body workout.

“No, we don’t,” she grunts, “but wherever it goes, it’s gotta be better than here.”

The ship shudders and screeches with another impact.

“Damage report,” Alex barks, but Kara’s already craning her neck around to read all the instruments.

“Direct hit,” she reports. “Shields at 40% and dropping.”

Alex grunts again. She opens her mouth to issue a command but Kara’s already turning dials and flipping switches. “Rerouting power to the keel shielding and tractor beam,” Kara reports crisply, like they aren’t under heavy fire.

Alex nods. They’ve done this a million times by now. They both know what to do. “Shutting down all non-essential systems,” she says, and Kara chortles at the joke.

They haven’t had non-essential systems for over a year.

“Coming about,” Alex says. “Evasive maneuvers.”

“You know,” Kara grunts as she’s thrown roughly against her seatbelt, cracking her elbow painfully on the metal bulkhead next to her in the cramped compartment, “You don’t need to announce every time you’re doing an evasive maneuver in this rust bucket. I can — _oomph_ — usually tell.”

Alex snorts, her knees and hands flying over the controls. Several beams of light fly past them, proving that her hard work is paying off.

“We have to do it, Kara,” Alex calls out over the sounds of their engines starting to steam. “We can’t survive out here.”

There’s an explosion of sparks above their heads. The ship is getting louder, clearly protesting its treatment.

Kara coughs in the smoke that’s suddenly filling the cabin. “Do it,” she croaks, and Alex doesn’t have to be told twice.

She punches it, turning the old ship on a dime and streaking off in the opposite direction. The hull screams in protest and they’re both terrified that the mounting for the tractor beam will simply sheer itself off from the ship. But after a few long seconds, Kara reports, “Tractor beam steady, engines all power ahead,” and they both relax the smallest amount.

The ships behind them—bigger and much more powerful, but less agile—are still making the turn. They have maybe three more seconds before the other ships fully come about, and then another ten before they’re pulverized into space dust.

“Rerouting all power from life support to the engines,” Alex calls. Kara doesn’t even bother to protest. Rerouting power from life support is Alex’s favorite move.

It’s risky, but it pays off. They shoot forward and, by Alex’s count, four seconds before they’re back in weapons’ range, the wormhole opens in front of them.

It’s enormous. Monstrous. Mostly blue, with green streaks. It forms like fast-motion footage of a hurricane—a colossal cloudy spiral—before it splits open from the center, yawning like a gaping wound of light. A vast, white light spills from the eye of the wormhole, the blue streaks continuing to race around it like a whirlpool.

It’s terrifying. Alex knows her ship is small, but the wormhole would dwarf even the behemoth ships behind them.

And, of course, there’s the fact that they don’t know where it leads.

But behind them is certain death, and the hull is making a sound below them like it’s not going to sustain another impact, and the engines are properly screaming and smoking now.

She doesn’t know where it leads, but they can’t survive out here.

It’s louder and bumpier than it’s ever been inside this particular ship, but Alex doesn’t let off the throttle for a second. Without even a pause, she throws them into the wormhole.

A few seconds later, deep in the wormhole passage, Kara cheers. “They aren’t following,” she calls out. She joyfully returns some power to life support, reducing the engines back to about 50%. The ship stops screaming, although it’s still bellowing smoke into the cabin and there’s a horrible noise coming from the engine compartment that Alex doesn’t even want to think about.

But Alex just frowns. “I wonder what they know that we don’t.”


	2. Neutrino Burst

* * *

“Major, scanners are reporting a neutrino burst. It looks like the wormhole is opening.”

Major Sawyer flicks her head over to the viewscreen. “Are any ships scheduled to be coming through?”

“No ma’am,” reports Ensign Vasquez. It’s all quiet in the operations center, usually called Ops. The station is humming gently, as always, and there are the sounds of a couple pairs of regulation boots on the metal flooring, but that’s it. The Ensign’s fingers don’t make a sound on the sleek touch-button controls, and it’s just a skeleton shift right now. It’s 05:30, and most of the senior officers won’t be on shift until 06:00 or 07:00.

It’s been two years, but Major Sawyer still isn’t used to the quiet.

“Setting the alert for ready stations,” she says, pressing the appropriate buttons. It’s probably nothing—a transport coming back early, or some other boring detail that’ll result in too much paperwork—but better safe than sorry. “Inform the Constable.”

Ensign Vasquez calls down to security while Major Sawyer watches the viewscreen.

The wormhole is indeed opening.

She’s seen it a hundred times but it never quite gets old. The only stable wormhole in existence, linking her alpha quadrant to the far away gamma quadrant. Linking her insignificant homeland to the farthest corners of the galaxy.

And, of course, linking her homeland to the United Federation of Planets. To the Federation’s space exploration and scientific wing, Starfleet.

Her planet Bajor is—on a fast ship—a good three-week voyage from Starfleet’s Headquarters on a planet called Earth, which sits right in the center of the alpha quadrant. Bajor, in comparison, is in one of the most remote corners of the quadrant. Or, well. It was, until the wormhole made it Strategically Important.

The Major is grateful to the wormhole for the way it connects her to her gods, but she could do with a lot less Starfleet.

The wormhole opens, and the Major has to squint at the screen. “There’s a ship coming through. Can you identify it?”

“Negative,” Ensign Vasquez says quickly. “Make and origin unknown.” She presses a few more buttons, then, “It appears to be in some distress, Major. I’m reading engine failure and minimal life support.”

Major Sawyer quickly zooms in on the image. “Ensign, am I crazy, or is that another ship underneath it?”

There’s a long pause. The station seems to be humming louder than usual. “Affirmative.” The Ensign’s voice is clearly surprised, and the Major takes a mental note. That’s only the third time in two years that Ensign Vasquez has expressed an emotion in Ops. “The main ship is holding another under the keel with a tractor beam.”

Major Sawyer can’t understand why a ship in such distress would be diverting power from life support to a tractor beam, but she figures there’s time for those answers later.

“Open a channel and send the standard greeting.”

A long moment, then, “They’re responding, Major.”

Suddenly Ops is filled with the sounds of a ship about to tear itself into pieces. Through the speakers, the Major can hear clanking, screeching, thudding, and the unmistakable sound of someone coughing. “Wait,” a voice is saying, and it sounds like people are talking to each other, not to the station for a moment, then a voice gets louder. “Sorry, where are we? My readings are all over the place.”

Major Sawyer takes over. “You’ve traveled through a wormhole,” she begins, but she’s cut off.

“Yeah, no shit.”

Ensign Vasquez gasps. _Four times, then_.

The Major, going against most of her instincts, decides to press on like that didn’t just happen. “You’ve travelled 70,000 light years from your last coordinates,” she says crispy. “You’re now in a part of space we call the alpha quadrant.”

There’s dead silence from the other side of the line. Or, well, it’s still terribly loud, what with their ship clearly about to explode, but they aren’t saying anything.

The Major and the Ensign exchange looks from across Ops.

“Um, I’m sorry.” This second voice is higher and friendlier. “Did you say the _alpha_ quadrant?”

“Affirmative.”

“Holy _shit_.”

The other voice comes back. Deeper, more skeptical. “You said this station is called, what? Deep something?”

“Deep Space Nine,” the Major tells her.

“Who controls it?”

“I’m Major Sawyer Maggie—” but she’s cut off again.

“No, I mean which power? Klingon Empire? Romulans? Cardassians?”

These people know a lot about the key players in the constantly shifting world of alpha quadrant politics. The Major decides to answer honestly, but she’s already skeptical as hell. “Deep Space Nine is a joint operation of the Bajoran government and the United Federation of Planets, also known as Starfleet.”

There’s a muffled explosion. The Major decides to cut right to the point. “We can see that your ship is in some distress. We can offer you docking and a place to make your repairs, as long as you agree to follow station protocols.”

The sound cuts off for a moment, and the quiet in Ops rings in the Major’s ears.

She wonders if they’re going to turn and go right back through the wormhole. It’s happened before.

But just as she resigning herself to a morning of filling out forms about the dumbasses who accidentally traveled 70,000 lightyears, the comms come back to life.

“We may just take you up on that.”  
  


* * *

The ship docks on Upper Pilon 2. The Major goes to meet it, along with Olsen and Schott. Olsen is the head of security, and his presence is standard for any unknown ship coming through the wormhole. Schott is the chief engineer, and he’s ready to spring into action in case the ship gets any closer to exploding.

“You expecting any trouble, Major?”

She shrugs at Olsen. “Not quite sure, Constable. Better safe than sorry, though.”

He nods but doesn’t respond. He doesn’t need to. They’re sort of past that, the two of them.

If she had to pick one person on the ship to be by her side in a fight, she’d pick Olsen. She’s known him for years—since this station was part of a Cardassian military installation and she was a Bajoran freedom fighter.

They’re the only two officers who aren’t Starfleet goody-two-shoes, and everyone pretends like that doesn’t matter anymore, but the two of them know differently. He’s a hard-nosed cop and she’s a guerilla fighter. They didn’t come through some cushy academy or grow up on some civilized world without war or poverty. She grew up during a genocide. It killed both her parents, and most of her friends. She killed for her freedom, dozens of times over. Olsen is the only known member of his species; he grew up entirely alone, and has had to carve out a life for himself in this hostile, war-torn corner of the quadrant.

These cushy Starfleet officers think they’re trained for war, but they don’t know anything. Not like she does. Not like the Constable does.

They’re tough, Sawyer and Olsen, and they wear their toughness like a badge of pride. They use their titles religiously—Major and Constable, not the Starfleet ranks of Lieutenant or Commander or Chief—and they both wear Bajoran uniforms, not the color-coded Starfleet pajamas.

They’re different, and it matters.

But Schott, in his little yellow Starfleet uniform, is bouncing on the balls of his feet, clearly elated at the idea of seeing inside a new type of ship. The Major just hopes it doesn’t explode before he gets the chance, taking half the station with it.

Finally, the docking door starts to roll open. There’s the acrid smell of smoke and the sounds of movement, but no one steps through the doorway.

“Show yourselves,” calls a voice. The Major recognizes it as the less friendly one from their earlier chat. She looks over at Olsen and they both step forward together. She places her hand on her phaser but doesn't pull it from its holster. Yet.

“I’m Major Sawyer, this is Olsen.”

A flash of movement, then, “That’s not a Starfleet rank. And those aren’t Starfleet uniforms.”

“How do they know that?” Schott hisses from behind her. The Major waves her hand to shut him up, but the damage is done.

There’s another flash of movement, but before she can even pull her phaser, there’s the unmistakable sound of a blaster going off.

On instinct, she ducks down and pulls her phaser, preparing to return fire. Schott, a little more slowly, does the same on the other side of the door. But Olsen holds up a hand, stepping directly into the doorway.

“Hey, hey, it’s alright,” he says, his voice calm and steady like these strangers didn’t just fire a deadly weapon on his team. “It’s alright. This station is run by the Federation and by the Bajoran government. The Major and I represent Bajor, but the Chief here, and many of the other officers represent Starfleet.”

“Bajor is under military occupation,” the angry voice says, and the Major can’t for the life of her figure out how these people from the gamma quadrant know so much about what was, until recently, the most insignificant corner of the alpha quadrant.

“Not anymore.” Olsen is calm and patient, still standing in the doorway. “The Bajorans overthrew the Cardassians two and a half years ago. They petitioned to join the Federation, and that’s why we’re all here now.”

“How the hell did the Bajorans overthrow one of the strongest military powers in the quadrant?”

Olsen opens his mouth to respond, but the Major’s had enough. She, still in her defensive squat, calls over her shoulder, “We can chat about galactic military tactics after you put down your weapons.”

The two strangers are clearly discussing amongst themselves, but eventually it seems like they come to an agreement.

“Fine, but only after you prove what you’ve said.”

Major Sawyer rolls her eyes, but Olsen plays along. “How would you like us to do that?”

“Throw me your badge.”

“Excuse me?”

“Throw me a badge. Let me look at it.”

The Major wants to say no, but Schott is already shrugging and tossing his comm badge inside the doorway. It clatters on the grated flooring, and a hand quickly scoops it up and out of view.

A long moment, and then, “Holy _shit_.”

There’s the sound of a gun being gently placed on the floor, and then a person steps out into the doorway. She tosses the badge back to Schott, and the Major almost faints with surprise.

She’s _human_.

Or at least, she certainly appears to be.

She’s a bit taller than the Major, with dark brown hair unevenly sheared off just below her chin. She’s wearing a set of mismatched clothes that look like they've been continuously worn for weeks, if not months. She’s almost comically dirty, but beneath the soot and smoke, the Major can tell that she has pale skin, not unlike Schott’s.

She’s holding her hands up in surrender, but the Major has seen enough battle-hardened fighters to know that this woman is still quite obviously deadly. And, based on the way she’s standing, is possibly concealing two other weapons on her left side.

Before anyone can say anything, another group approaches. The Major turns her head and almost groans out loud. It’s the Commander approaching with a group of security agents, clearly alerted by an automated message about the shot fired.

“Major,” he’s saying as he walks up. “Is there a problem here? Ops reported blaster fire.”

But before she can tell him she has it under control—he never believes that she has things under control—the woman in the doorway gasps.

“John?”

And the Major is about to correct her—the commander’s name is Hank Henshaw—but he beats her to it.

“Alex?”

And then suddenly he’s raced past the Major and he and the woman have met in a powerfully tight embrace.

The Major’s never seen the Commander be affectionate like this with anyone, but he’s hugging this woman like they’re the last two human beings in the universe.

He pulls back just enough to look at her. “Is it really you?” he asks, which Sawyer thinks is an absurd question.

But she’s nodding, and quite possibly crying, and suddenly Sawyer feels like a real creep, staring at them, her phaser still ready in her hand. She decides it’s safe enough to holster it, and she nods at Schott to do the same.

“How did you get here?” The Commander is asking, but it’s the second voice from inside the doorway that responds.

“Alex?” The voice seems hesitant, nervous.

The second person steps into view, and she also looks human. Mostly. She has light yellow hair and the same pale skin as the first (Alex, is seems), but she has some facial tattoos that don’t look particularly human. Or Federation.

“John,” the first woman breathes, still holding onto the Commander with one hand, but reaching her other back to her companion. “You remember Kara?”

And the Major had thought that the Commander looked surprised when he saw the brunette, but now she’s honestly worried he’s going to faint.

“You did it?” He asks, his voice nothing but wonder. “You found her?”

The one called Kara beams. “She found me.”

The two of them embrace, although the Major notices that the Commander—whose name is definitely Hank, not John—leaves one of his hands on Alex’s shoulder, like if he lets go she might vanish back into the ship and fly away.

“Uh, sorry to interrupt, um, whatever this is,” Schott pipes up, suddenly much closer to the embracing group than he probably should be. “But I’m a little worried that your ship is going to, um...explode? Maybe we should do some repairs now, and then hugging later?”

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Art by the amazing [@IronicPotential](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ironicpotential/pseuds/ironicpotential). You can find all of her illustrations in once place [here!](https://t.co/0cIKwAI5U9?amp=1)  
> 


	3. Switchblades and Symbionts

They do just that. The Major heads back to Ops. The Commander, unsurprisingly, stays with the ship and the newcomers.

It’s certainly a mystery, but the Major doesn’t dwell too much on it. She has work to do.

But a few hours later she’s taking her lunch break on the promenade, the huge circular center ring of the station that serves as the hub for all civilian activities. The Major is eating in Cat Grant’s bar, and she can see people at the tailor shop, coming and going from the temple, buying foods and sweets from stands, and trading for local goods. She’s minding her own business, making serious inroads on her lunch, when she sees Commander Henshaw escorting the two women around. And she can tell from Alex’s gait that she still has concealed weapons on her left side, and weapons are strictly forbidden on the promenade.

Olsen would have a stroke, if that were physically possible.

She takes one last bite of her lunch and then stands up, neatly intercepting the group. And she _knows_ that she’s right about the weapons because Alex’s hand twitches over to what Sawyer is pretty sure is a switchblade before she processes who it is.

“Ah, Major,” the Commander says, and she’s never seen him even close to this happy. “I’d like to formally introduce you to our guests.”

Major Sawyer nods, tucking her hands behind her back in something like parade rest. She really misses having pockets; she never knows what to do with her hands in this uniform.

“These are the Danvers sisters.” He gestures to the blonde, “This is Kara Danvers.” She and the Major both make friendly nods and shake hands. “And this is Lieutenant Alex Danvers.”

Sawyer stops, her hand only halfway towards Alex. “Lieutenant?”

Alex narrows her eyes, but it’s the Commander who answers. “Starfleet,” he says, answering the question that the Major hadn’t quite asked.

She wants to say _what the fuck_ but she settles for the more polite version. With an acute pang, she misses being a freedom fighter, able to curse, yell, and piss whenever and wherever she pleased. “I wasn’t aware any Starfleet crews were dispatched to the gamma quadrant.”

Alex shrugs a little. “According to Starfleet, I defected four years ago.” She looks over at the Commander, almost like a child embarrassed by their dad’s public praise. “I’m pretty sure I’m not a Lieutenant anymore. Henshaw’s just being nice.”

The Major nods politely, but doesn’t fail to notice that in the docking bay Alex had called him by a different name. The Major doesn’t fail to notice anything.

“Well then,” she says, her hands behind her back again. “Welcome back to the alpha quadrant.”

Alex nods back, and clearly expects that to be the end of it, but the Major reaches out and grasps her arm. Her clasp is soft—no problem for even a cadet to break out of—but Alex is whirling on her, a switchblade in her hand before the Major can even blink.

Sawyer can’t help but be impressed, but she doesn’t let that stop her. She reaches out, disarming Alex with a quick swipe of her hand. Alex is better trained than any Starfleet officer Sawyer’s ever encountered, and the Major’s aware that she only wins the second-long struggle because Alex didn’t truly mean to pull the blade. It was instinct followed by regret, not deadly intention.

The Major’s only seen those instincts in other people who have lived through war, up close and personal. She wonders just exactly what Alex and Kara were doing in the gamma quadrant.

The Commander quickly moves between them—too quickly, Sawyer tries not to notice—his hands up. “Whoa,” he’s saying. “Whoa, whoa.”

Sawyer just holds up the switchblade, flicking it closed. “No weapons on the promenade,” she says, pleased to have won this battle. “Station rules.”

Alex is rolling her eyes, but Sawyer isn’t done. She holds out her empty hand. “The other, please.”

Alex crosses her arms over her chest, staring down at the Major. “I don’t have any others.”

She obviously does. Possibly two more. One above her knee and one at her ankle. The Major isn’t sure why the weapons detectors didn’t catch them, but that’s an issue for Olsen to sort out.

“Yes, you do,” she says, her voice measured but with a threat behind it. She’s not intimidated by strange women in public, in the artificial light of day. Alex is good—shockingly good—but Sawyer’s better. She’s been a freedom fighter since she was a child. She killed her first Cardassian when she was twelve years old. She grew up in the forests, the camps, the strongholds of the resistance. She’s been undercover, she’s been a sniper, she’s been a general. She’s held friends and family members in her arms as they’ve died violent deaths, and she’s stood over enemies and watched them bleed out in front of her. She’s killed with guns and knives and bombs and poison and her bare hands.

She’s not afraid of a lightly armed Starfleet Lieutenant on the promenade.

“Hand them over, or the Constable will have to arrest you.”

Alex opens her mouth, obviously to protest, but Kara puts a hand on her arm, clearly trying to calm her down. “Alex,” she says softly, and to the Major’s surprise, it seems to work.

Alex turns back to look at her sister, and the Major takes the opportunity to study the other Danvers sister. Up close, she still looks mostly human. She’s taller than Alex, with long blonde hair and pale skin. But the facial tattoos that dance across the bridge of her nose and forehead are distinctly alien. The Major’s never seen anything like them. They seem to shimmer in the light—one moment black, the next light blue. Always iridescent, like fish scales seen through moving water. They’re beautiful, and give her a sort of ethereal look, like maybe she’s closer to her gods than other people are.

Alex lets out a long sigh, like taking off her weapons is an incredibly taxing and stupid thing, and unstraps another knife, handing it over. It was the one above her knee, but the Major just tsks. “And the ankle, please.”

Alex blinks, incredulous for just one small second before she huffs out a breath and does as she’s told.

Sawyer collects both before looking at her once more, critically sweeping her eyes up Alex’s body.

“My eyes are up here,” Alex drawls, but Sawyer ignores her. She’s sure there’s another, based on Alex’s body language, but she can’t figure out where it is, and clearly Alex isn’t volunteering it.

“I’ll have the Constable lock these up for you,” she says, carefully balancing all three in her hand. “You can have them back when you’re departing the station.”

Alex’s dismissive wave proves that she’s strapped with more, and it makes the Major grind her teeth in frustration.

But the Commander is just smiling at her, shaking his head a little, clearly in the kind of fond exasperation that means nothing will get done. He leads them off, one of his hands protectively over Alex’s shoulder, and the Major understands that she’s been dismissed.

That if there’s another altercation, he’ll take Alex’s side.

Sawyer abandons the rest of her lunch, and stalks off to the Constable’s office.

* * *

Alex—or, rather, Lieutenant Danvers, as the Commander insists on calling her—is absolutely everywhere over the next few days. The Major runs into her on the promenade during meals. She’s wandering through Ops during the day, even though Ops is strictly off-limits to people who aren’t (currently) officers. She’s getting a drink at Cat’s Bar and Casino when Sawyer’s trying to blow off steam. She’s in the Commander’s office, lounging and laughing, when Sawyer comes in to report.

She’s always armed, and always smirking at Sawyer, and the Major absolutely hates it. Hates her.

On the fourth day, the Commander invites all the senior officers together for what he’s calling a “welcome party” for Alex and Kara.

The Major had expected them to leave, to head back to Earth or wherever, but this doesn’t bode well.

She doesn’t want to show up, but this isn’t the type of party that’s optional.

She slinks into the Commander’s personal quarters a few minutes late, and everyone else is already there, sitting quietly around the dining table. The Commander urges her into a seat, and she slides into a chair at the end, next to the Constable. He nods at her, and she nods back.

It’s all they need.

The Commander stands, beaming around at all of them. He holds up his glass of Tulaberry wine—courtesy of Cat Grant, of course—and the Major settles in for a long speech.

“As all of you know, a few days ago, a ship came through the wormhole,” he starts. “It was a terrible ship.” He laughs, and so do Schott and Kara. Alex rolls her eyes.

“It was falling apart, one impact away from obliteration. But it came through the wormhole, and it docked here, and two young women came out of it. I know most of you have met by now, but it’s time to make formal introductions. First, I would like all of you to meet Lieutenant Alex Danvers. Alex is a Starfleet science and tactical officer. I’ve known her since she was born. Her father and I were very close friends. I sponsored her application to the Academy.”

He smiles at her, for all the world like a father, and the Major hates her. She and the Commander are okay now—not nearly as hostile and distrusting as they were when she was first assigned to Deep Space Nine two years ago, but she’s had to earn every scrap of trust from him. And now this new person waltzes in, arrogant and armed and smirking, and she’s going to undo all of that work in mere weeks.

The Major wonders if it’s time to try to get reassigned. Again.

“And, even more miraculously, Alex brought back her sister, Kara Danvers. Kara went missing as a child, and Alex and her father never gave up on finding her. Alex left Starfleet four years ago to follow a lead, and, against all the odds, she brought her back to us.”

The Major blinks. That’s a lot of new information. So Kara is human too—or was. She has an ethereal quality to her that the Major’s only ever seen in the old Kai, the spiritual leader of her planet. The Kai was closer to their gods, called the Prophets, than anyone, and being next to her felt like being next to Kara. They both seem like they’re holding in some great light.

The tattoos shimmer across Kara’s forehead, and Sawyer wonders what happened to her while she was gone.

“They’re both going to be staying here for a little while, to reacclimate to life in the alpha quadrant. So I wanted them to get to know you all.” He turns his head, gesturing to the woman sitting on Kara’s other side. “Ladies, this is our doctor, Sam Arias. And she’s accompanied by her daughter, Ruby.”

Dr. Arias nods to Alex and Kara, and ten-year-old Ruby waves. She seems mesmerized by Kara’s tattoos, and Major Sawyer can’t blame her.

“Next we have Major Sawyer Maggie, my second in command, who you’ve already met.”

Sawyer gives them a tight nod. Kara beams at her, but Alex—arms crossed—just stares, clearly remembering the switchblade incident. Sawyer makes herself smirk, just for the show of it. She knows how to play this game. She’d played it a million times in the rebel camps, jostling for position in the resistance cells.

The Commander pretends like it isn’t happening. He carries on, his voice low and powerful, forcefully smoothing the moment over. “And the Constable, our head of security, James Olsen.”

Alex blinks. “You’re wearing a Bajoran uniform.” She doesn’t phrase it as a question, but it clearly is one.

The Constable is, quite visibly, not Bajoran. His face is impossibly smooth, nearly waxy, like an unfinished sculpture. Bajorans have nose ridges and distinctive earrings, and he has neither. And yet, he’s wearing a Bajoran uniform, just as clearly as Major Sawyer is. Constable isn’t anywhere near a Starfleet title, nor—not that Alex would know it—a Bajoran one.

“I was serving as chief of security on Deep Space Nine before the Federation arrived, and I stayed on,” he says evenly, like that statement isn’t loaded with some of the most complex geopolitics in the quadrant.

Alex, unfortunately, doesn’t let it pass. “But this was a Cardassian military installation. Were you working for the Cardassians?”

But Sawyer’s had enough. She leans forward—not quite standing up, but poised to strike, like a snake. “Alex, how many of your family members did the Cardassians murder in cold blood?”

Alex blinks at her. “Excuse me?”

Major Sawyer repeats herself, enunciating even more clearly in a blatant show of disrespect. “How many. Of your family members. Did the Cardassians. Murder before your eyes?”

Alex doesn’t say anything. The Major keeps going.

“How many people did you see the Cardassians murder before you were ten years old? How many villages did you see burned with the babies still sleeping inside?”

Alex is silent. Staring.

“Because if you can’t answer those questions, then you have no fucking business poking your nose into shit you don’t understand. This isn’t some cushy Federation planet, with clear-cut good and evil. This is real life. It’s messy, and complicated, and you don’t understand shit about it.”

“Major—” Henshaw holds up a hand, but she has one more thing to say.

“Don’t you ever doubt the Constable again. As the Bajoran liaison to Deep Space Nine, if you have something to say about Bajoran relations, you can bring them to me personally. If you have an accusation to make, you can make it to my face.” She sneers, letting Alex see just how dangerous she can be.

Kara is holding in light, and Sawyer is holding in murderous darkness.

“Major, please.” Commander Henshaw looks furious, but Sawyer settles back into her seat, satisfied.

Alex doesn’t deserve to know how the Constable earned her trust, but he’s the only person on this station that she’d trust to guard her while she slept. That’s all there is to it. Alex can _fuck off_.

The Commander decides to keep going, like his second in command didn’t just threaten actual murder of his protégée over appetizers in his home.

“You’ve met Chief Petty Officer Winn Schott, our chief engineer.” Schott nods at them, and Alex still looks furious but she has the grace to nod back at him. He’s making marvelous inroads on repairing their crappy little ship.

“And, finally, our science officer, Lieutenant Lena Luthor.”

And Major Sawyer had thought the dinner theater was over, but Alex rockets up out of her seat, spitting fury. She’s reaching across the table, like she wants to throttle Luthor.

The Constable, Kara, and Commander Henshaw all move to restrain her. They all move just a little bit too fast for human beings. Sawyer pulls Lena back from the table, shielding her and snatching a knife off the table. Lena’s soft and mutable behind her, which is absolutely unlike the Lieutenant.

Alex is snarling, but Henshaw and Kara seem to have her firmly in hand. Olsen is just standing there, between both groups, calm and steady. Like always.

“Alex, stop!” Kara’s holding Alex with just one arm, but she seems impossibly strong and Alex can’t get away from her. “What are you doing?”

Alex frees a hand, and points a shaking finger at Lena. “Luthor? You have the Luthor symbiont?”

“Yes.”

Alex growls.

Lena’s voice is steady, and Sawyer can feel her straightening up. “Yes, I do. I know why you hate me, daughters of Jeremiah.”

Alex screams—pure fury—and Kara wrestles her out the door. She tosses a, “Sorry!” over her shoulder as she manhandles her sister out into the corridor. The Commander follows them out, and the rest stand there for a moment in shocked silence.

“Mom? What just happened?” Ruby’s voice is small and her eyes are wide, like she hasn’t blinked in minutes.

Sawyer relaxes. She squeezes Lena’s arm once, and then goes back to her seat, dropping down heavily and chugging half her class of Tulaberry wine. The rest follow suit, finding their chairs again.

Sam is trying to mumble something to Ruby, but Lena’s voice cuts through.

“The Danvers sisters have encountered me before. When I was Lex Luthor.”

Sawyer blinks. That…that explains a lot.

Ruby—who has only just arrived from Earth and doesn’t seem to have had a quadrant-wide education—looks confused. “When you were what?”

Lena spreads her hands out on the table. “My species is called Trill,” she says, her voice carefully measured, which Sawyer knows is a coping mechanism she’s developed to deal with the storm raging inside her brain. Lena gestures to the distinctive markings that run from her hairline down into her shirt collar—the wide stripe of small brown spots that distinguish her as a Trill. “Some Trill, a small number, are what is called Joined, which means that we have a symbiont. Do you know what that is?”

Ruby shakes her head. Sawyer does too, for different reasons. What kind of school was she going to, on Earth?

“It’s an intelligence that lives symbiotically inside of a host. The symbiont is a lifeform, and it lives inside of the bodies of individual Trill people. It remembers everything we ever do. When this host dies, when Lena dies, the symbiont will be passed along to another Trill. That person will have all of my memories and personality, plus their own. After a while, they’ll mesh together and become one. And over and over and over it goes. I’m the thirteenth person to mesh with the Luthor symbiont, and I carry the memories and feelings and knowledge of all twelve who preceded me. My symbiont is named Luthor, which is why I am Lena—the name my mother and father gave me—and Luthor, the name of my symbiont.”

“So, it’s like you have past lives?”

“Sort of. But they’re also very much present, inside me. I can’t have a conversation with any of them, but I hear their thoughts the same as I hear my own.”

“So why did Alex get so upset?”

Lena puffs out a breath. Sam, her eyes tender and comforting, takes up the thread. “The last two hosts of the Luthor symbiont were very bad people. Lex, and then Lillian. They hurt a lot of people.”

Lena nods. “Yes. Including Alex and Kara, and their family. When the Trill government found out, they removed the symbiont from Lillian. They thought about destroying it, but the Luthor symbiont is responsible for some of the biggest advances in science and technology in our history. They decided to try two more generations, to see if the addition of two moral, stable, rational personalities could bring the symbiont back into balance.”

“Is it working?” Ruby looks scared, like Lena might suddenly turn into Lex and start slaughtering what’s left of this dinner party.

“I don’t know,” Lena says, her voice soft. “I’m the first, since Lillian, and it’s very difficult. Every day, I can feel the two of them—Lex and Lilian—inside my brain. Their memories urge me to do all kinds of terrible things. But the symbiont has also given me so much. I had two doctorates before I became Luthor, but I’m more brilliant now than I was before. I don’t regret my choice to become a Luthor, but it’s much more difficult than I expected. Every day, I have to work very hard to control myself.”

That wasn’t exactly reassuring. Ruby looks anxious. “What if Lex or Lilian try to come and take the symbiont back?”

“They can’t,” Sam says, rubbing her daughter’s back. “They’re dead. Joined trills don’t survive without their symbiont.”

All of the adults are very careful not to say the other half of it. Not in front of the child. But symbionts can’t live without hosts. Trill hosts.

And—thirteen months ago, exactly—Lena’d been having a bad night. Wrestling with what she’d done, when she’d been Lex and Lilian. She’d come to Sawyer’s quarters, and made the Major swear to murder her in cold blood if she ever gave in and let the darkness swallow her. It would mean murdering not only Lena, but all of the other Luthors whose memories live on inside the symbiont.

Sawyer had said yes.

If worst comes to worst, she’ll murder her friend—and the living memory of a dozen others—in cold blood.


	4. Bat'leths and Battle Wounds

Major Sawyer is in the holodeck, sweating like mad. She’s running a workout program, one where holographic Klingons charge her, over and over again. She’s dispensed with the corny cave scenery the program came with, so Klingon warriors just materialize out of thin air and charge her with their traditional weapon of choice, the bat’leth.

Bat’leths are double-sided swords with curved blades and several different ways to kill a person at once. Klingons wield them with either one or two hands, spinning and swirling them to deadly effect. Sawyer had never used one before coming to Deep Space Nine, and she can’t deny that they’re fun.

She’s just skewered a big, nasty, smelly holographic Klingon with her bat’leth and is spinning to take out one behind her when the program pauses. She straightens up from her crouch, confused, as the fake men around her freeze in their contorted positions. She’s about to go over to the control panel to check the settings when she hears the whoosh of the doors to holodeck opening.

Sawyer assumes it’s someone coming to tell her that she needs to report to Ops for some minor emergency or another, but she pulls up short as Alex walks in.

Holodecks are really a one person at a time kind of situation. She expects Alex to duck out with an apology, but Alex just nods at her.

“Bat’leth. Nice.”

Sawyer just blinks at her.

Alex is wearing odd clothes. They look both stretchy and, at the same time, armored. She crosses to the center of the room, for all the world like she belongs there.

“Computer,” she orders. “Bat’leth.”

A holographic sword materializes in her hand, a perfect match to the one Sawyer is still clutching.

“What are you doing?” she finally manages.

But Alex just pulls a scrap of fabric up from around her neck, using it to hold her hair back from her face. “I thought you might fancy a real opponent.”

“I’m in the middle of a program,” the Major protests, sweeping her hand to gesture at the three Klingons arrayed around them, still frozen mid-swing, their mouths open in silent battle cries.

“Yeah, but where’s the fun in that?” Alex grins, and Sawyer tries not to respond to it. “Klingons only fight one way. Let’s mix it up.”

Sawyer hates to admit it, but Alex is right. Klingons are obsessed with honor, so they mostly just run full-frontal assaults. It would be fun to use their weapon for a different type of fighting.

She forces herself to sigh heavily, though, because Alex is still absolutely her least favorite person on the station, and holodeck time is supposed to be private.

“Fine,” she grunts. “But don’t go running to Henshaw when I beat your ass.”

Alex grins at that, but she honestly has no fucking idea what’s coming.

“Computer,” Sawyer calls, “Remove the Klingons.”

There’s a beep of acknowledgement, and all three snarling warriors disappear.

Alex starts to whirl her bat’leth in her hands, flipping it around and around like a deadly baton. It’s a nice visual—all sharp edges and curved blades—but it’s showy.

Sawyer doesn’t fight showy. She fights dirty.

She drops under Alex’s guard and, before they’ve even begun, scored a direct hit to Alex’s ribs. Alex grunts at the impact, her reflexes good but not fast enough. Sawyer’s out of range before Alex can swing out, and she’s dancing back in for another blow just a breath later.

Alex is good, though, better than any other Starfleet fighter Sawyer’s tested. She’s strong and wily, and pretty soon they’re both circling the fighting ground, bat’leths at the ready.

It’s not long before they’re both breathing hard. Sawyer can feel blood trickling from a cut on her cheek, and Alex has taken three direct blows to the body. Her pants are ripped, and Sawyer can see the skin of one thigh, lightly covered in blood, through the tear.

“See,” Alex says, her breath hot, her eyes sparkling. “Isn’t this more fun than a whole day of bludgeoning the sons of the House of Dreck?”

Sawyer wrinkles up her nose, feinting forward and luring Alex into a vulnerable position. “Is that a real House?” She slashes the air where Alex’s head was, just a split second ago.

Alex laughs. “I hope not. It means ‘shit’ in Yiddish, one of the old Earth languages.”

Sawyer can’t help but smile. Alex is so surprised by it that Sawyer lands a devastating blow across her stomach.

Alex coughs, and the computer beeps. “Fatal injury detected,” the computer announces. “Major Sawyer is the winner. Resetting simulation.”

Sawyer feels her cut close up, the blood vanishing. Alex’s pants are still ripped, but her thigh is whole underneath, and her stomach is fine.

“Does it ever feel like cheating to you?” Alex asks as she flings herself at Sawyer again, their bat’leths shrieking against each other.

“What, having the holodeck safeties on?” Sawyer grunts, her bat’leth tangled up with Alex’s. She’s pressing Alex away from her, using the muscles of her arms and back to keep Alex’s bat’leth from sinking into her heart.

Alex presses in harder, smirking. “Fake opponents, fake weapons, fake injuries. Fake stakes.”

“Sure,” Sawyer grunts, finally managing to throw Alex off her and spinning away. “But it’s better than the alternative.”

Alex spins the bat’leth in her hands again, clearly daring Sawyer to charge again. “Which is what?”

“Surviving a genocide only to die during a fucking Starfleet imagination game.”

Alex grins, but it doesn’t shut her up. “Well, you know what the Klingons say. _Today is a good day to die_.”

Sawyer rolls her eyes. “Yeah, and you know what the Bajorans say? _Klingons are fucking looney. Stay alive. Kill Cardassians_.”

Alex snorts with laughter, and Sawyer takes the opportunity to land a kick, hard, to the base of her spine. Alex goes down in a heap, and doesn’t get up quickly enough. The computer beeps again. “Victory to Major Sawyer. Resetting.”

“You cheated,” Alex groans, still on the floor. “That wasn’t a bat’leth.”

But Sawyer’s won two in a row, and she’d been working out for an hour before Alex had shown up, and she’s very much enjoying having the upper hand.

She drops her bat’leth on the ground, and walks over to the door.

“All that talk of fake weapons. Here I thought you wanted a real bruise to remember me by.” She smirks as she saunters out the holodeck, and Cat Grant, from behind the bar across the room, gives her a strange look.

* * *

* * *

“How’d you learn to fight like that?”

Sawyer’s eating dinner at Cat’s, sitting up at the bar. She’s in a piss poor mood. She’s supposed to be eating a Bajoran comfort food, but the replicator has made an absolutely disgusting facsimile of it. Only a childhood of deprivation is keeping the Major from junking it and trying to make something else. She’s here alone, but Alex is plunking herself down in the barstool next to her, and she’s just waving away Sawyer’s scowl.

“Drink, Danvers?” Cat calls from the other end of the bar.

“Aldebaran whiskey.”

Cat nods, and Sawyer shakes her head. She’s stuck drinking non-alcoholic synth-ale because she’s on duty soon, and Alex is stealing her private dinner and also ordering one of the most delicious whiskeys in the quadrant. Great.

Cat places the drink down in front of Alex, and Sawyer can smell it so clearly that she can taste it in the back of her throat.

Alex takes a sip and makes a truly obscene humming sound, and Sawyer tries to force herself into a meditative state.

“So,” Alex prompts, and Sawyer opens her eyes, resigned.

“So, what?”

“How did you learn how to fight like that?”

Sawyer looks down at the congealed mess of what’s supposed to be her favorite childhood dish. Her mother had made it, when she was very young, before she’d been taken by the Cardassians. Her father had made it after, and the other women in the Singha refugee camp where they lived. This is supposed to be a Bajoran space station, now, but the food replicators can’t make this simple country dish.

It still makes great Cardassian dishes, though.

Sawyer pushes the plate away from herself, no longer hungry.

“We didn’t all grow up in the Federation, _Lieutenant_ ,” she snarls. “On Bajor, you fought, or you died.”

She stalks out of the bar, and she thinks she hears Alex calling after her, but she doesn’t stop.

* * *

Sawyer manages to avoid Alex for about a week, which on a station this small is something she’s quite proud of. She’s taken to eating more of her meals in the Constable’s office, but that’s not a real hardship. Olsen is content with quiet, and he’s good conversation when she wants it.

But on the second time she ventures out to eat on the promenade—Olsen busy with “actual work, maybe you’ve considered it,” the asshole—Alex finds her.

She doesn’t sit down, though, which seems like progress. She hovers, standing a bit uncertainly over Sawyer’s table, which is new. She’s never been uncertain before. She’s always annoyingly self-assured.

“Hey, Major, do you have a second?”

Sawyer tilts her head, taking Alex in. She’s using her title, rather than her name, which is new. She’s asking before talking. And, honestly, Sawyer’s a bit tired of skulking around, trying to avoid her. It’s a _really_ small station.

She inclines her head, milking it for all it’s worth.

Alex nods back. She twists her hands together as she says, “I just wanted to apologize. For what I said, the other day. It was…well, Kara told me to say ‘insensitive,’ but I think ‘fucked up’ might be more appropriate.”

Sawyer can’t help the laugh that bursts out of her lips. The corner of Alex’s mouth quirks up.

“So, anyway. I’m sorry. I guess I’m so used to being the one with the fucked up backstory, that I forgot where I was. Won’t happen again.”

And Alex is by far the best fighter on the station, other than Sawyer herself, and Olsen who cheats, and maybe Henshaw who they’re all dutifully pretending is human when clearly he’s not. Alex seems to understand fighting for survival in a way none of these coddled Starfleet jumpsuits do. Alex has good taste in whiskey and it seems like she’s planning on sticking around for a while.

So Sawyer inclines her head again, this time towards the empty seat across from her. Alex sinks into it, hesitant and questioning. But Sawyer’s not one for talking about feelings when at all possible—she’d rather fight off a troop of Cardassians single-handed.

“You hungry? This replicator makes a mean grilled cheese, or so Dr. Arias is always saying.”

Alex blinks at her, taking a beat. “You’re not going to ask me for my fucked up backstory?”

Sawyer shrugs. “I hate it when people ask me about mine.”

“Fair enough.” Alex is staring at her, though, like Sawyer’s surprising her. Sawyer likes that. It makes her feel powerful, being able to keep someone on their toes. She loves to keep her cards close to her chest.

Alex goes to the replicator, coming back with what Sawyer’s learned is a grilled cheese sandwich and tomato soup. It’s a vile combination, but the humans seem to all love it.

Alex grins at Sawyer’s knowing look. “Hey, doctor’s orders, right?”

Sawyer lets her get two bites in before she leans back in her chair, takes a sip of her drink, and says, “So, how’d _you_ learn to fight like that?”

Alex almost chokes on her sandwich, but she manages to survive without any medical intervention. “So,” she says, narrowing her eyes, “you _are_ asking for my fucked up backstory.”

Sawyer raises an eyebrow and shrugs, hoping it lands more softly than usual.

Alex rolls her eyes, but she puts her sandwich down and starts to talk anyway.

“I grew up on one of the big Federation starships. You know, the ones with hundreds of crew, and thousands of family members. The ones going on long, deep space missions. Exploration, science, all that shit. And when I was twelve, we were visiting this planet, and Kara was kidnapped from the surface.”

Sawyer blinks. Henshaw had said that Kara went missing as a child, but kidnapped. That’s new.

“She was only ten, and just, poof. Gone, without a trace. My dad suspected someone,” Alex scratches at the back of her neck, suddenly awkward. “Um, Lex Luthor, actually.” Sawyer tries not to outwardly react, but, oh.

Oh.

_Poor Lena_ , she thinks. Lena had original chosen this posting on Deep Space Nine because it was an out of the way corner for her very private battle between the good and evil in her mind. Then the wormhole appeared, changing the entire job, and now two of the consequences of her actions, back when she was Lex, have sauntered onto the station, complete destabilizing her again. Sawyer makes a note to bring Lena an extra dessert later today.

Alex is picking at her sandwich, obviously uncomfortable with the memory of her outburst ringing in the air between them. She soldiers on, ripping her bread into shreds. “But, uh, my dad could never prove that it was him. We didn’t—the whole crew, the whole power of the Federation came down, but no one could find her. Eventually everyone just…moved on.”

“But not you.”

Alex grimaces a little, something that was maybe supposed to be a wry smile. “Not me.” She shrugs a little though, like she’s trying to shake it off. “But, anyway. That’s when I started learning to fight. J’o—I mean Henshaw, he was friends with my parents, on the ship, and he started teaching me to spar, to help me deal with my anger.”

Sawyer tries not to react, but she’d just started to say the same name she’d called Henshaw, that first day. It’s almost like the name John, but with a buzz behind the first sound, and a lilt. Sawyer hasn’t forgotten it. But Hank Henshaw never served on a starship like that; she knows his service record. She carefully gathers up all of that information, tucking it into the file in her mind that she tries not to think about too much.

Her orders are to follow her commanding officer, no matter who he might be.

Alex, oblivious to the whirring in Sawyer’s mind, keeps going. “So I was already pretty good, by the time I started at Starfleet Academy. And, I mean, they think they teach hand-to-hand combat, but…”

She trails off, and Sawyer snorts.

Alex laughs. “Right. You’ve sparred with them, I assume?”

Sawyer lets her nose wrinkle up. “I mean, I guess they’d have considered it sparring…” It’s more like kittens pawing at each other.

Alex lets out another bark of laughter. “Right. Yeah. But I—because I came in so strong—they put me in a different course, and that’s where I learned to use weapons. Phasers, grenades, ship’s canons, all of it. So that was great. And then after I graduated I was assigned to…” She looks around, quickly, trying to gauge who’s nearby and could possibly overhear.

Sawyer rolls her eyes. Alex may be a good fighter, but she’s horrible at subterfuge and basic spycraft. Sawyer knows exactly who’s at every table around them, what time they sat down, and what they’re eating, and she hasn’t turned her head once.

Satisfied with her blatant survey, Alex keeps talking. “I mean, officially of course, Starfleet doesn’t have warships, right? Every mission is for exploration and discovery and all that idealistic, imperialist crap, you know, but, unofficially.” She shrugs. “You’ve seen them, right? The ships that dock here, the ones without families? The ships look different, and the crews too. Sleeker, faster, harder. You know?”

Sawyer blinks. She doesn’t, actually. She’s never bothered to see the Federation ships and personnel that come through the station as anything other than a monolith of morality and superiority.

She’s clearly going to need to pay more attention.

“Anyway, I was assigned to those. I saw a lot of combat. More than most field officers. And technically I was a science officer but everyone knew that I was there to be, like, I don’t know. Secretly tactical. In case things went sideways and our tactical teams were taken out. So I was fighting a lot, and I gotta say—nothing teaches combat like actual combat.”

Sawyer nods at that. She didn’t have the luxury of years of training before she was put in the field—she was born in the field—but her learning curve certainly accelerated after she started facing Cardassians with a phaser in her hand and a knife strapped to each thigh.

Alex tears off a bit of her sandwich, dunking it in her soup, and taking a small bite, like she’s carefully weighing her words. “And then I finally got a lead on where Kara could be, so I stole a ship and I went through a wormhole, and that was…”

She blinks a few times before she simply says, “I fought a lot.”

Clearly a huge understatement, but Sawyer had said she wasn’t going to press, so she doesn’t.

“And then I found her, and I fought to get her out, and then we fought more trying to get home.”

The mystery of Kara has been eating at Sawyer for weeks, so she can’t help but ask. “She was in the gamma quadrant?”

Alex takes another bite of sandwich. “Yeah. I mean, I think so. We were sort of off Starfleet’s maps. But, yeah. She was on a planet called Daxom, about a year’s hard flight from the wormhole, if you don’t hit trouble.”

“From the state of the ship you arrived in, I’m assuming you hit trouble.”

Alex grins this time, a little feral. “Yeah, but you should see the other guys.”

Sawyer laughs. They’d used to say that all the time, in her resistance cell. They’d come back to the camp, limping, bleeding, nearly dead, and crack a smile, and make the same joke.

Sawyer’s comm badge chirps, and Vasquez’s crisp voice asks her to report to Ops. Sawyer clicks her badge on and answers in the affirmative before looking back at Alex.

“Well, anytime you want someone to keep you humble in the holodeck,” she lets herself give a cocky smile, “Just let me know.”

Alex smiles back—a real, genuine smile that instantly transforms her from a cut-throat cynical deserter to a sweet, friendly young woman. It takes Sawyer aback.

“Count on it,” she says, taking another bite of her disgusting sandwich.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Art by the amazing [@IronicPotential](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ironicpotential/pseuds/ironicpotential). You can find all of her illustrations in once place [here!](https://t.co/0cIKwAI5U9?amp=1)  
> 


	5. Dr. Danvers

“Major, a ship is arriving this evening from Earth. I want to be informed as soon as they begin docking procedures.” Henshaw is barely looking up from his computer station, and Sawyer nods, her hands tucked behind her back in her best approximation of parade rest.

“Yes, sir.” She turns to leave his office, but he says something else.

“And I’d appreciate it if you could take some time to spar with Alex before the ship comes.”

“Sir?”

He looks up, then, and his eyes are twinkling. “It’s her mother, coming on the ship, and if she doesn’t get some of her nervous energy out, and stop running around and annoying me, I might murder her.”

Sawyer feels a stabbing pain in her lungs. Happy family reunions always do that to her. Every time someone had found a parent or child in a work camp, every time a survivor had risen from the ashes, it had felt like having a hot knife plunged between her ribs, and it still does.

Sawyer’s father was murdered by Cardassians, trying to protect his home and village. It took him days to die, agonizing days, and even killing his murderers with her own hands didn’t bring him back. Her mother was ripped from Bajor when Sawyer was only three, and died on this very space station, a prisoner of the Cardassians. There’s no happy reunion coming for her.

But she nods, and says “Yes, sir,” and she takes Alex to the holodeck and channels her anger and hate into beating the ever loving shit out of former Lieutenant Alexandra Danvers, and it helps.

A few hours later she finds Alex and Kara on the promenade. Alex has showered, since Sawyer had clobbered her in the holodeck, although Sawyer can see a bruise darkening on her neck from where she’d throttled her until Alex had kicked her in the stomach hard enough to still be painful now. Alex looks like she might throw up—anxious and pinched and terrified.

But not Kara. She’s bouncing up on her toes, her head on a swivel. She’s done something different with her hair, and it takes Sawyer a minute to realize that she’s swept more of it over her forehead, like she’s trying to cover her tattoos.

Sawyer thinks she shouldn’t have wasted her time. There’s no concealing that type of luminescence, or the way that pure light seems to pour out of her very skin.

Finally, the circular door to the airlock opens, and people start to flood out onto the promenade. Sawyer can tell immediately when their mother steps out of the airlock: Alex’s body becomes completely still, and Kara grabs her arm so hard that Sawyer winces in sympathy.

A tall woman, blonde and straight-backed, makes right for them. Her face is lined, but full of color, like she lives on a planet in view of a sun, not under the artificial lights of a ship or a station. She looks like Kara.

She reaches out for Kara first. She cups Kara’s face in her hands, and she’s crying as she pulls Kara in for a long hug. Kara’s crying too, and Sawyer has to look away. Her eyes fall on Alex, who is standing, straight and rigid and horribly tight, just a foot away from them. Her hands are balled up into fists, and Sawyer can tell that she isn’t breathing.

Just a few hours ago, those hands had been grasping at Sawyer’s body, her breath hot and fast, as she’d wrapped her legs around Sawyer’s chest and flipped her, painfully, onto her back. Alex never stops moving—not in the holodeck, not in Ops, not in Henshaw’s office—but just now she’s entirely still. A statue, a monument to anxiety and fear, and it pulls at Sawyer’s gut.

Her mom is brushing at Kara’s forehead now, exploring her tattoos, and Kara’s talking quickly—too quickly—and Alex is just there. Waiting.

Finally, their mom turns to Alex. She smiles at her daughter, but the smile doesn’t quite reach her eyes. “Alexandra,” Sawyer hears her say, even though she knows Alex hates being called that. Sawyer had taunted her with it, just hours ago, goading her into exposing her weak side. Alex had pulled a knife from her boot and plunged it into Sawyer’s heart, growling _don’t fucking call me Alexandra_ before the simulation had reset.

She’d happily murdered Sawyer for saying it, and right now her mom is saying it, and they haven’t seen each other in four years, and Alex brought Kara back to her, and Sawyer can’t quite figure out what’s going on.

Her mom hugs Alex, and Alex hugs her back, but it’s different than with Kara. Stiff. Alex is still vibrating with tension, even after her mom pulls away. They all start to walk down the promenade, probably towards their quarters for some privacy, Alex trailing a half-step behind where her mom and sister have their heads together, arms wrapped around each other, gushing tenderness back and forth.

Sawyer blinks, a few times. She should have let Alex kill her a few more times in the holodeck.

* * *

She has to go down to Bajor for a meeting the next day, and she’s beyond surprised to see Alex, Kara, and their mom walking onto the transport ship.

“Oh, Major Sawyer,” Kara gushes, beaming so hard that Sawyer’s afraid she’s going to set the entire ship on fire. “Please, meet our mom! Eliza Danvers!”

Sawyer steps forward, offering a formal handshake. “Welcome to Deep Space Nine, ma’am.”

Her handshake is limper than Sawyer had expected. “Dr. Eliza Danvers,” she says. “It’s a pleasure.” Sawyer nods, trying to make her face pleasantly blank, one of the many ridiculous skills she’s learned in the past two years of being a liaison officer to an overly friendly and diplomatic Federation.

She’s hoping that this little transport trip will change her mind about Dr. Danvers—that she’ll be fawning over her older daughter as much as her younger—but it doesn’t. Alex is quiet, nearly sullen, while her mom spends all of her attention on Kara.

Kara hasn’t seen her mom since she was ten and is positively basking her attention, and Sawyer gets that. But Alex hasn’t seen her in four years and she risked her life to bring Kara back, and it’s so weird between them. Sawyer can’t for the life of her figure it out.

Neither Alex nor Kara has gone down to Bajor yet, Sawyer realizes, as Kara starts pumping her for information on where they should visit. Sawyer hears herself agreeing to meet them at the botanical gardens near the Kai’s temple after her meeting before she can realize what a terrible idea it is.

And so, after a very frustrating three hours inside a tiny room with the leaders of the provisional Bajoran government—a ragtag group of former rebellion commanders and spiritual leaders who have frankly no idea how to unite an entire planet of traumatized resistance veterans and Cardassian collaborators and lead them through the healing and rebuilding process—Sawyer finds herself emerging into the bright Bajoran sunshine at the botanical garden. She takes a deep breath, letting her nose fill with the smells of home. The station smells like nothing, but Bajor is heavy with the scent of water, of blooming flowers, of fertile crops.

It smells like her childhood, like nights under the stars in the resistance, like stolen moments of happiness between battles and sorties. This is the Bajor she fought for—not that mess inside the council meeting. This land, these people.

She should really consider getting reassigned back down here.

She finds the Danvers family sitting underneath a tree. She’s hesitant to intrude, but Alex looks up at the sound of her footstep, and the desperation in her face draws Sawyer in.

“Major!” Kara chirps, her tattoos an iridescent silvery blue and opalescent milky purple in the sunshine. “You found us!”

It’s very odd walking them around the garden. Dr. Danvers asks her all kinds of questions about the names of plants, which Sawyer can’t possibly answer. When would she have had the time for botany lessons? Kara seems beyond delighted to be outdoors, on a planet, and Sawyer can’t figure out why she hasn’t come down to the surface before. It’s not a long trip.

And the dynamics between Alex and her mom are truly baffling.

After probably the tenth, “Oh, this tree is beautiful. What’s this called, dear?” Sawyer pulls Alex aside, intentionally dropping a full step behind the blondes.

“You mom knows Bajor was occupied, right?” She hisses to Alex. “She doesn’t think I grew up in, like, Federation style botany classes?”

Alex’s eyes flash with humor. “What, are you telling me you didn’t use the scientific names of each tree you were going to hide behind as you were planning your ambushes? _Quick, they’re returning fire, get behind that fernicilious bajoricallus_!”

Sawyer snorts—actually out loud snorts—and Alex smacks her on the arm. “Shut up!” she hisses.

Sawyer keeps snickering, and the blondes in front of them don’t seem to notice.

Alex sobers a little. “But, no. She’s never…I mean, no. Her life has been hard, don’t get me wrong. Kara going missing, my dad dying, me leaving…”

Sawyer blinks, quickly. There’s something about Alex’s dad that’s been niggling at her mind—something else to do with Lena. Lena had said, “I know why you hate me, daughters of Jeremiah,” not “sister of Kara,” and so Sawyer has a sneaking suspicion that, in addition to kidnapping Kara, Lex or Lillian Luthor murdered him. But this is the first Alex has ever mentioned him, and Sawyer hasn’t exactly wanted to bring it up. She doesn’t press now, either—they’re out in the sunshine and Alex is making jokes—but she remembers it.

Alex, oblivious, keeps going. “She’s lived through tragedy, but never…I don’t think anything in her life prepared her to understand what life was like, here.”

Alex leaves the rest of it unsaid, but Sawyer hears it anyway. That, somehow, in the past four years, Alex has seen enough, and done enough, to understand. And, just maybe, that’s the whole problem here.

Sawyer leads them into the temple complex. Several vedeks, the priests of Bajor, stare at Kara, and one bows. Dr. Danvers looks surprised, in a bad way. Sawyer assumes one of the many Federation people that don’t believe in religion, or faith, or the Prophets. People who think science means that nothing else can exist. Narrow minded, ignorant fools, the lot of them.

Sawyer leaves them outside when she goes into the temple to pray. She strips off her uniform jacket and stands in her undershirt, baring herself to the Prophets. She holds her arms up and out, her palms cupped towards the shrine, just like she learned as a toddler. She closes her eyes, and tries to fall into the meditative state she learned as a small child. She centers herself, and feels gentle brush of the Prophets in the air. She asks the Prophets for patience, for compassion, for direction. She finds her mind straying to Alex, waiting for her outside, standing just apart from her family, and, closing her eyes against the greed of her request, she prays for Alex, too.


	6. All In

About a week later, Commander Henshaw invites all of the senior staff for a team building activity in the holodeck. It’s framed as an invitation, but Sawyer knows that, just like his dinner party, it’s not actually a request.

The Commander, Lena, Arias, and Schott are all obsessed with this casino program, set on Earth in the year 1962 in a city called Las Vegas, which was apparently known for being a hotbed of everything that was wrong with pre-Starfleet Earth: capitalism, corruption, excess, violence. Bad hair styles. Sawyer gets why the humans like it—it’s a taste of what they were born too late to fear. They can romanticize it, because it’s been generations since Earth has had money or poverty, or rampant corruption and state-sanctioned violence.

And Sawyer doesn’t mind it, either. It’s so different from the corruption on Bajor—no collaborators, no hostile occupation. Just glitz and glittering jewels and games with no real stakes. Playing games for colorful plastic chips doesn’t exactly thrill her, but it’s an evening with her friends, outside Ops. She gets to wear comfortable clothes, not her usual Bajoran military uniform, and drink real alcohol, and make fun of Schott. Even Olsen gets into it.

It’s usually pretty fun.

At Lena’s urging, Sawyer has the replicator make her an outfit for tonight. She usually just wears one of her few sets of Bajoran clothing—her knit red vest over green trousers, or something like it—but Lena is insistent. She’s done plenty of research on Earth fashions from that time, and has sent one to the Major’s replicator, already in her size. Sawyer thinks it’s kind of dumb, but she likes to make Lena happy, so she presses the appropriate buttons and the clothes materialize inside the machine.

And, dang. 1962 Earth might have been rough, but this suit is gorgeous. Long black trousers, wide and straight. They come up past her waist, and she tucks the draped white silk shirt into them. She ties a silky white kerchief around her neck, letting it fall down in a feminine approximation of a tie. The jacket is black too, with silver pinstriping like the trousers. It hugs her like a glove. She places a shiny dark cloth in the pocket of the jacket, which seems purely decorative and excessive but it looks good. She slicks her hair back, gathering it in a low bun at the nape of her neck.

She checks her reflection before leaving her quarters, and she can’t help but applaud Lena.

She looks _good_.

She finds most of the rest already in the holodeck. Henshaw, Schott, and Olsen are all in black suits, Olsen looking profoundly uncomfortable. Arias and Lena are wearing gorgeous dresses—Arias in dark blue and Lena in a glowing emerald. Cat Grant is there too, wearing some sort of red monstrosity from this century, clearly already several drinks in.

Lena unfolds herself from her chair, sauntering over to Sawyer with a grin.

“You wore it!” Her eyes are twinkling, like she knows how close Sawyer came to not replicating it, and how grateful she is now that she did it.

“Well,” Sawyer shrugs, uncomfortable with the implied compliment. “You went to all that effort.”

Lena rolls her eyes, something in her 200 years of life seeing right through Sawyer.

And then the holodeck doors whoosh open again. Sawyer does a quick headcount—everyone is already here—but then, of course. Kara walks in, with Alex behind her.

Kara’s wearing a golden gown, draped and shimmering and beautiful. Her tattoos are a light opalescent blue, and her hair is curled more than usual. She looks amazing. Alex, like Sawyer, is wearing a suit, but hers is a more classic men’s suit. Her white button-down shirt is crisp and starched, with a perfectly tied black bowtie on top. Her jacket is buttoned closed, accenting her waist. Her black pants have a strip of satin running up the side, disappearing under the jacket.

They’re a perfectly matched set—sunshine and moonlight.

They join the group at the table, and they don’t seem to need the extensive tutorial on human card games that Sawyer and Olsen had needed their first time—and that presumably Luthor had in one of her past lives. The dealer, a hologram, simply deals Alex and Kara in, and they both take up the game seamlessly.

Sawyer’s pretty good at poker—she’s good at reading people—but Lena usually cleans up. Damn 200 years and 13 lifetimes of brilliance. Sawyer’s pretty sure it’s cheating, but what else can you do during an interspecies game of chance and strategy in a fake casino on a planet you’ve never been to?

Kara bets too much too often. She’s optimistic and laughs loudly when she loses. Alex keeps giving her chips so she doesn’t run out, and Kara spends them with reckless abandon. She and Schott are giggling so much during one hand that the holographic dealer has chastise them, which quiets them down for only a couple of hands. Kara finally runs out of chips completely, and Lena pushes a stack of chips over to her. Alex eyes the interaction with suspicion, but doesn’t say anything, and Kara accepts them with a gracious smile.

Sawyer raises one inquisitive eyebrow at Lena, who gives her the tiniest shrug back. Maybe they’ll strike up a peace. That would be nice.

For most of the night, Alex makes money. She bluffs well, and plays conservatively, often choosing to fold on what Sawyer suspects are decent cards. Her stack of chips is steadily growing—or, it would be, if she weren’t making so many loans to her sister—but a few rounds from the end, Sawyer finds her tell, what she unconsciously does when she’s bluffing, and ruthlessly exploits it.

Sawyer drives her out of the game, and then ends up losing spectacularly to Lena, who rakes in all of their combined chips with a restrained grin and a knowing smirk.

Fucking Trills.

Folks split up then, some going to play roulette, others blackjack, some to the slots, others to listen to the singer crooning up on the stage. Cat slides over to talk to the smarmy casino owners, no doubt trying to mine them for information she can use at her own small but real casino on the promenade.

Sawyer goes over to the bar, leaning her hip up against the gleaming wood with the gold inlay, and ordering something called a Manhattan from the bartender.

“Make that two,” a voice says from behind her.

The Major doesn’t need to turn around to know who it is.

“How you planning to pay for that drink?” Sawyer asks, smirking. It’s obviously a joke—the chips were fake, the bar is fake, the money is fake, but she still took all of the money Alex had collected over the past hour, and she’s damn proud of it.

Alex rolls her eyes, coming to lean against the bar, facing her. She’s unbuttoned her suit jacket, now, and it’s hanging casually around her hips. “Hilarious.”

The bartender hands them their drinks, and Sawyer takes a small sip before humming appreciatively. The bartender may just be a constellation of lights and computer programming, but he makes a damn good Manhattan.

“So. Come here often?” Alex is smirking, and Sawyer tries not to smile.

“Henshaw’s obsessed,” Sawyer offers. “We’ve been teambuilding in here for months.”

Alex grins at her. “Better here than at a baseball game. Has he made you go to one of those yet?”

“Ugh, yes!” Sawyer curls her lip in disgust and Alex barks out a laugh. “Just the one, but, _man_. It was the most boring three hours of my life, and I grew up doing sentry duty.”

Alex nods, sage and knowing. “He made me go to one every single week when he was training me, on the ship. It was brutal. He said it was teaching me patience or something, but…no. Give me a game of Parrises Squares any day.”

Sawyer nods back. “Remind me to teach you Springball,” she says. “Arias says it’s like the human game handball? I don’t know, but it’s fast and strategic and can get brutal.”

Alex grins, something wicked in her face. “Sounds like my kind of game.”

They’re quiet for a few moments, sipping at their drinks and taking in the din around them. The holograms gambling, shouting in victory, playing the slot machines, the singer lamenting a long lost love, the sound of the small ball whirring around the roulette table. Everyone around them is decked out in their best 1962 glamour outfits, and it’s nearly impossible to tell the real people from the projections.

“Have you ever played pool?” Alex asks, out of nowhere.

“Pool? Like, a pool of water?”

Alex chuckles. “That answers that question.”

Sawyer pretends to shove her. “What’s pool?”

“Stick around after teambuilding,” Alex says, pushing off the bar and heading over to where Kara is cheering for Schott as he bets everything he has at roulette. “I’ll show you.”

* * *

* * *

After another hour or so, everyone else trickles out in ones and twos. Lena offers to walk with the Major back to their quarters, but Sawyer declines. Lena raises an eyebrow but says nothing, and Sawyer doesn’t volunteer the information. It’s not like she’s doing anything bad—Henshaw would be thrilled, she’s sure, that she and Alex have started getting along—but, still. It’s so unlike her, to choose to spend time with someone new, to stick around in a holodeck to play a game she’s never heard of with someone she met just a few weeks ago. It took Lena an entire year to get Sawyer to admit that they were friends.

She’s not sure what it is about Alex, but she’s pretty sure she doesn’t want to see Lena’s reaction to it, so she says nothing, and Lena doesn’t press.

Cat goes home first, well and truly sloshed. Lena leaves with Arias a while later. Henshaw and Olsen leave within a few minutes of each other, and after a while Kara and Schott, still giggling, traipse out to get dessert on the Promenade.

Sawyer had expected that Kara would be sticking around for whatever pool is. But now it’s just her and Alex left in the holodeck, and Alex is saying, “Computer, end program,” and everything that isn’t the two of them is fading away to nothing—the people, the sounds, the carpet, the walls, the chips. Alex goes over to the control panel to start another program, and Sawyer’s just standing in the empty silver room in her black suit, alone with Alex.

The new program starts. Alex has called it “Dollywood,” which is a word Sawyer doesn’t know. New walls form around them, new people, new things. It’s another bar, but it’s dark and grungy. No gold or glittering chandeliers. The ground looks like industrial flooring, cement maybe, and the walls are a dark brown that fades into the background. There are exposed pipes, and dark booths, and stools up at the bar that have seen better days.

Sawyer’s not sure what planet it’s from. It could be anywhere—the patrons are from some races Sawyer’s familiar with and a lot that she’s not.

Alex guides her over to a big, surprisingly wide table, topped with green felt, spangled with hard, smooth balls. Sawyer picks one up—it’s cold and surprisingly heavy.

“This is a pool table,” Alex says, gesturing to it. “The goal is to hit the balls into the pockets.” It’s just then that Sawyer notices the six holes in the sides and corner of the table. She furrows her brow. This is…way too simple.

She rolls the ball in her hand into one of the pockets, raising a judgmental eyebrow at Alex. “Fun?” she asks, dry and sarcastic, but Alex just laughs. She’s stripping off her suit jacket, leaving herself in only her white shirt and black suspenders. She rolls her sleeves up to her elbows in quick, precise movements.

“Not quite like that,” she says. She pulls a long stick off the wall and hands it to Sawyer. “Use that.”

Sawyer blinks. The stick is perfectly smooth and waxed. One end is thicker than the other. She takes the thick end, and uses it to nudge another ball, guiding it carefully into a pocket, like how the dealers push chips around in the casino.

“Wow. Much better,” she deadpans.

Alex snorts. She grabs her own stick. She uses the thin end, which, now that Sawyer looks closely, has a black tip in a different material. Alex leans down low over the table, holding the stick in both hands. She moves the stick back and forth a few times in short, precise movements, and then the tip collides with one of the balls, hard. The ball clacks against several others before bouncing off one wall, and falling into a pocket with a dull thud.

“Oh.”

Alex laughs. “I’ll show you.”

* * *

Halfway through the second game, and Sawyer’s starting to get it. She’s stripped off her jacket, too, folding it carefully and draping over the same chair as Alex’s. Her white blouse is sleeveless, just covering her collarbones and shoulder blades, so her forearms keep resting right on the green felt. At first, she kept hitting the balls too hard, and she missed the ball entirely an embarrassing number of times, but Alex is patient teacher, and she’s started to get the hang of it now.

She can tell she’s getting better because Alex is transitioning from teaching to heckling. She’s drinking what she’s called a beer from a glass bottle, letting it dangle from her fingers when it’s not her turn to hit the balls with the stick. Sawyer’s drinking a human whiskey, and she’s pretty sure the alcohol isn’t helping her aim, but it burns pleasantly in her chest, and that’s a bargain she’s willing to make.

“So,” Alex says, as Sawyer tries to work the blue ball with a human number on it towards a pocket. “Is there a Mr. Sawyer?”

Sawyer looks over at her, incredulous. Alex is trying to look perfectly casual and innocent, sipping a beer in her suspenders, but Sawyer doesn’t miss the intent, almost hawkish look in her eyes.

“Is there a Mr. Danvers?”

Alex tilts her head a little, narrowing her eyes, marking the evasion for what it is. “Not since my dad died,” she finally says, her voice matter of fact.

The Major turns her attention back to the pool table. “Same here,” she says, hitting the ball a little too hard with the stick. It bounces a few times before rolling to stop in a truly inconvenient spot on the table.

She wonders if Alex is going to press the issue—ask why not, or start asking about one of the many eligible men on the station—but she doesn’t.

“It must be lonely,” is what she says. “Floating this far above the planet you worked your whole life to save.”

Sawyer presses her lips together, trying to will herself into her usual stoicism. She has a few answers she usually gives. _I’m proud to continue working in Bajor’s best interests_ , she says to the political and military leaders who hold her fate in their hands. _Someone needs to speak for Bajor_ , she says to the Starfleet officers, always proud and more than a little defensive. _I go where I’m ordered_ , she says to other Bajorans with a knowing look, a way of saying that she never asked to be assigned to this cold Cardassian space station.

But here, in this dimly lit holographic bar, holding this smooth stick in her hand, two whiskeys and three Manhattans in, watching Alex hit a ball into the pocket, her suspenders tight over her shoulders, Sawyer tells the truth.

“It is,” she says. “It always has been.”

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Art by the amazing [@IronicPotential](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ironicpotential/pseuds/ironicpotential). You can find all of her illustrations in once place [here!](https://t.co/0cIKwAI5U9?amp=1)  
> 


	7. Gamma Quadrant

The Major doesn’t see much of Alex for the next few days. Her mom must be keeping her busy. Alex invites her to spar a couple times, but Sawyer’s working so much that she can’t make it. The provisional government is breaking up into factions, and she’s doing as much damage control as she can. It’s horrible.

She hates it so much that Henshaw, fed up with her foul mood and constant calls from Bajor, practically throws her into a shuttle for a routine scouting mission to the other side of the wormhole, in the gamma quadrant. They go often, just to make sure no one is amassing any armies or invading forces, or trying to destroy the wormhole itself.

Sawyer’s just going through the launching protocols—Starfleet has so many fucking protocols—when the airlock doors open and Alex steps into the shuttle.

“Alex,” Sawyer says, a little idiotically. “Hi.”

“Hey, partner.” But it isn’t until Alex sinks down into the chair next to Sawyer that it clicks.

“Wait.”

“Yup.”

Sawyer blinks, a few times, very fast. “You’re not an officer. How are you going on a mission?”

Alex shrugs. “I think Henshaw’s trying to get rid of me.”

Her tone is light, but Sawyer can hear the heaviness underneath. She understands, now. Watching Alex with her mom—on Bajor and on the station the last few weeks—has reminded Sawyer of what happened to Tala.

One of her friends in the resistance, Malim Tala, had found her mother, after years and years. Tala had been ripped from her mother’s arms when she was just fourteen, pulled out of Singha to work in a labor camp on the other side of the planet. Tala’s mother had been ecstatic to see her again, but had expected Tala to be exactly the girl she’d been when she was taken. And at thirty, after three years in the work camp and then thirteen years in the resistance, that little girl hadn’t existed anymore. Her mother had begged and pleaded for Tala to leave the resistance cell, to turn her back on fighting and try to be a farmer out in the remote provinces, to bribe the Cardassians with their best crops. To become fucking _collaborators_ and try to live their lives in peace. Tala had refused, and her mother—the mother she’d pined over for so many years—had turned her back.

Sawyer had sat up with her, all night, as Tala had gotten herself dead drunk. The next day, bleary eyed and miserable, Tala had single-handedly charged a Cardassian transport and nearly gotten herself, and the rest of the cell, killed.

Sawyer understands, more than most, how war can change someone beyond recognition. She wonders what her own mother would think of her, now.

Sawyer takes a look at Alex. She’s not wearing a Starfleet uniform, but she’s wearing a comm badge and has a standard issue phaser at her hip. Her hands are moving lightly over the controls with a speed and fluency borne from years of familiarity.

“Don’t crash my ship,” is all Sawyer says.

Alex scoffs. “Excuse you, I’m a great pilot.”

Sawyer raises an eyebrow. “I saw the condition of that rust bucket you arrived in, Danvers.”

“Hey, it was like that when I got it!”

Sawyer laughs, and Alex slaps at her again. Sawyer leans back in her chair and lets Alex finish the pre-launch protocol.

Their tiny little shuttle, just big enough for the two of them, finally pulls away from the station, and Alex surrenders the controls as Sawyer gracefully steers them in a wide arc towards the unremarkable stretch of space where the wormhole will be. She turns off the lights inside the shuttle, which Alex makes a little sound about, but doesn’t protest. But it’s better like this. Holier.

The wormhole opens, yawning its swirling blues and greens, and the shuttle dives in.

Alex seems to be holding her breath, and Sawyer doesn’t blame her. It’s only her second time through it, after all, and the reverence hasn’t worn off after two years of consistent travel for Sawyer. The path through is beautiful, glittering and swirling. Sawyer makes a small gesture, brushing her hand to her heart, and then against her earring.

“This is the Celestial Temple,” she says softly, trying not to notice how the blue lights are dancing across Alex’s face. “This is where the Prophets of Bajor live. For the Federation, it’s the only stable wormhole in existence. But for us, this is our holiest of temples.”

Alex is quiet until they’re through the wormhole, out in the blackness of space on the other side. The wormhole closes behind them, and suddenly they’re awash in darkness.

“Thank you for showing it to me,” she finally says, her voice soft, and Sawyer knows what she means. People can go back and forth through the wormhole a hundred times without feeling the power of the Prophets, if they aren’t looking for them. If Sawyer had said nothing, Alex would have done the same.

Sawyer sets the shuttle to autopilot, and leans back, finally looking over at Alex. “Well, get comfortable,” she says, gesturing out at the expanse of space. “This is our next eight hours.”

* * *

Both of them, it turns out, are terrible at sitting still. Sawyer works for a while, trying to finish some reports, but they’re boring as sin and she hates writing reports. Alex, without even the distraction of requisition lists, can’t stop fidgeting. It’s driving Sawyer mad.

“Alex,” she says, not looking up from her work pad. “You’re humming again.”

“Oops. Sorry.” But Alex is throwing her head back, rubbing her hands over her eyes. “This is way more boring than Henshaw made it sound.”

Sawyer snickers, and Alex turns to her, scowling. “Don’t even pretend that you’re not ready to tear your hair out, Major Enormous Sigh Every Five Minutes.”

Sawyer throws her pad at Alex, careful to miss her head. “Shut up,” she says, but she doesn’t ask for the pad back.

Alex forces her to play several rounds of chess, which Sawyer doesn’t really understand the rules of and hates, and then poker, which Sawyer absolutely crushes her at again. Here in the shuttle, just like on the holodeck, Alex gets a little crinkle in her forehead when she’s bluffing, which Sawyer once again exploits to the fullest extent possible.

Alex replicates some of her favorite snacks from childhood, which Sawyer mostly finds disgusting. Alex’s delighted laughter has her playing up the disgust, just because she likes the sound so much.

And then, after six hours together in the tiny shuttlecraft, which is not even six feet wide in the cabin, Alex turns to her and says, “What’s your name?”

Sawyer chokes on something called a potato chip. “Excuse me?”

“Sawyer’s your family name, right? What’s _your_ name?”

Sawyer nods. Most humans do their names in reverse, with their family names last. It had caused inordinate confusion when the Federation had first arrived to Bajor, and it was only a genuine desire for peace that kept several accidentally informal greetings from becoming huge diplomatic incidents.

“Margarita. Maggie.”

“Maggie.” Alex feels it out. “I like it.”

“Thanks for your approval,” Sawyer deadpans, but Alex just rolls her eyes.

“I meannnn,” she drawls, making Sawyer laugh, “that it suits you. Sawyer is who you are on the outside—formal, strong, take no shit—and then Maggie is who you are on the inside. In private.”

Sawyer blinks at her. “And who is that?” She means for it to be taunting but it comes out soft, vulnerable.

Alex looks into her eyes, and for once she isn’t joking or showing off. “I’m still figuring that out,” she says, her voice almost reverent in the quiet of the shuttle, surrounded by the infinite darkness of space.

Sawyer thinks about how they’ve sparred, how she’d taken Alex’s arm in the botanical garden, how Alex had brought her to Dollywood, and how earlier today she’d thrown her pad at Alex’s head, and rolled her eyes and laughed, and eaten the potato chips just because Alex had asked her to.

She hadn’t realized it, but she’s been Maggie with Alex since that first day in the holodeck, with the bat’leths and the Klingons.

She hasn’t been Maggie in a really, really long time.

* * *

“So,” Maggie says an hour later, warming her hands around a steaming cup of raktajino, the incredibly strong Klingon coffee that Henshaw got them all hooked on last year. “Things aren’t going great with your mom, huh?”

Alex startles a little bit, her raktajino splashing onto her fingers. “Ouch, shit.” She hastily puts her cup down on the console in front of her, shaking the coffee and heat from her fingers.

“Smooth,” Maggie mutters, and Alex does what Sam Arias has taught Maggie is a very rude human gesture.

Alex wipes her hand on her pants, cleaning off the console with her sleeve.

“Classy,” Maggie deadpans, and Alex threatens to dump the rest of her drink on Maggie’s head.

But after she’s settled back in her chair, her coffee safe in her hands, Alex hums a little bit, tilting her head in consideration. “But, yeah, no. With my mom. Not great.”

“I’m sorry,” Maggie says, trying to show that she means it. She’s looking right at Alex, for once not rolling her eyes or joking. “After everything you went through to bring Kara back…that must be…” She makes an aimless gesture with her hand, not sure how gentle she should be with her words.

But Alex doesn’t seem to need the words at all. She lets out a wry, humorless laugh. “Yeah. You’d think.”

Maggie takes a sip of her coffee, not sure what to say. She’s not good with parents. She doesn’t really know anyone who has them.

“She always…before Kara was taken, she was always busy. Always in her lab. Kara and I—when my dad wasn’t around, I basically raised Kara. And myself. And then after, my mom just…” Alex shrugs. “She never really came back from her lab.”

Maggie blinks, but she can’t say she doesn’t understand. She’s quite practiced at avoiding coping with death, herself.

“The thing with being a scientist living on a starship, of course, is that you’re never not at work. And she just…stopped coming home.”

Maggie rubs a drop of coffee off the lip of her mug, trying not to think about how she abandoned her father when he was dying.

“And then my dad died, and that was kind of it. She didn’t want to talk about him, or about Kara. It was like they never existed.” She shrugs again. “That’s why…that’s why Henshaw taught me to fight. I was so angry, you know, and he realized that if I didn’t find a way to deal with it, I was going to go supernova.”

“I get that.” Maggie says it into the soft darkness, the black universe spooled out in front of them. “I’ve been angry every day of my life.”

Alex has her legs pulled up to her chest, her coffee in one hand and her head in the other. She’s staring at Maggie, considering her.

“How do you live with it?”

Maggie’s tempted to give a blow-off answer, something pithy and fake and distracting. But something about Alex—the earnest look on her face, the softness of her eyes, the way she sees both Major Sawyer and Maggie—makes her take a deep breath.

“I pray.” She exhales. “I try to breathe.” She lets herself give Alex a little smile. “I beat the shit out of upstart Starfleet Lieutenants in the holodeck.”

Alex smiles back at her, but Maggie keeps going.

“But mostly, I’m just angry. I’m angry that the Cardassians stole my planet, my family, my childhood. I’m angry that I had to learn how to kill. I’m angry at the things I did, the ways that I let the war change me.”

“You had to do it,” Alex says, soft and sure. “You had to.”

Maggie nods. “I know. And that makes me furious. That I have to live with the memories, with this blood on my hands, and I had no choice. I was born into occupation and I fought my way out, and that makes me _fucking_ furious.”

She blinks, horrified to find tears in her eyes, but Alex is just nodding like she gets it. Like Maggie’s exactly who she expects. Like everything she’s saying is fair and true and right.

“I think my mom—and Kara, to an extent—they don’t get it. They’re not…they’re not angry, like I am. Like we are. Kara tries, but my mom…” Alex sighs. “She’s always wanted me to be different.”

That doesn’t sit right with Maggie. War changes people, and tragedy. Horrible loss. But Alex deserves care, and love, and compassion. Understanding, and forgiveness.

“I don’t,” she says into the dim quiet of the shuttle. “I don’t wish you were different.”

* * *

They’re about to swing back through the wormhole, their patrol finally done, when the console in front of Alex chirps. “Distress signal,” Alex reports, eyes and fingers flying over the controls.

“Where?” Maggie asks, sitting up straight in her chair, but Alex is already taking the shuttle off autopilot and entering a new course.

“Not far. Only a few minutes.”

Maggie checks the phaser at her hip, and the three knives hidden on her body. She sees Alex do the same, and she tries to remember to fully disarm her later. She thinks Alex is strapped with four today, but she wants to find out.

They pull into visual range of the ship, and it’s in tatters. It’s a miracle that the distress signal is still going out. There’s debris floating in all directions away from a central point of destruction.

Maggie scans for life signs as a formality, and can’t believe it when she finds one. “There’s a survivor,” she says quickly. “One life sign.”

“Opening a channel,” Alex says, with that Starfleet rigid calm in her voice.

“This is the shuttle _Ganges_. We received your distress signal. We’re here to help,” Maggie says into the comm.

“The energy core is unstable,” Alex reports. “We need to get him out of there.”

“We’re going to use our technology to transport you aboard our ship,” Maggie says as Alex quickly locks the transporter onto the life sign and beams it into their shuttle.

A body materializes on the floor behind their chairs. Maggie hurries to it, while Alex quickly swings their shuttle away at maximum speed. An explosion from behind them rocks the shuttle—likely the energy core rupturing—and Alex points them to the wormhole at maximum speed.

Maggie crouches over the person. The body is bloody and battered. She’s not sure what this species is supposed to look like, but certainly not like this. His extremities seem to have turned to pulp, and he’s not moving. Maggie scans him, quickly. He’s still alive, but all of his life signs are faint.

“Can you hear me?” She hopes the universal translator that Starfleet implanted in her brain works on his species.

He lets out what might be a low groan.

“We’ll be through the wormhole in ten minutes,” Alex reports from the front of the shuttle. “No sign of pursuit or any other ships.”

Maggie’s pretty sure they don’t have ten minutes.

“What’s your name?” She wishes she could hold his hand, but there isn’t a centimeter of him that looks undamaged and she doesn’t want to hurt him.

“Ykkhr,” he grunts, and Maggie takes a deep breath. She’s held enough dying soldiers in her arms to know what it sounds like.

“Ykkhr, you’re safe now,” she lies, making her voice as soothing as she can. “We’re going to make you all better.”

Alex, though, is coming over and leaning over him, and she’s not at all gentle as she says, “Who did this to you?”

She’s blazing with fury, but the dying don’t need fury. Maggie holds up a hand, trying to warn her off.

“What is the name of your people?” Maggie asks him, gentle and patient.

But Ykkhr doesn’t answer.

“Tell us who did this.” Alex is insistent, too loud and too close. “We’ll stop them.”

Ykkhr seems to take a few terribly painful breaths. “Alex,” Maggie murmurs, “Let him rest.”

But he twitches, and finally grunts out another word.

Maggie can’t make head or tails of it. It sounds like _dxm_ , and she assumes it’s the name of his people until Alex blanches and her body stills.

Ykkhr shudders, the air leaves his body in a long, horrible wheeze, and then he’s still. Maggie doesn’t need the instrument in her hand to know that he’s gone.

She starts to center herself, to begin the prayer for the dead, but Alex is grabbing her arm, throwing her into her seat.

“We have to get back to the station,” she demands, her eyes wide and wild. “We have to warn them.”

Maggie rubs at her arm, sure Alex will have left a bruise. “Warn them about what?”

Alex looks over, and her gaze is hard and predatory, like when Maggie’d first seen her in the airlock when she’d arrived on that busted ship.

“He said Daxam. The people who attacked him. He said _Daxam_.”

Maggie’s pretty sure she’s missing something crucial. “What’s Daxam?”

Alex, without a verbal warning, reroutes power from life support to the thrusters, increasing their speed by half.

“Alex!” Maggie reaches out, grasping at Alex’s hand. It’s cold and clammy, shaking. “ _Alex_. Talk to me. What is it?”

“The Daxamites are who I rescued Kara from. And they’d do anything to get her back.”

* * *

The rest of the story comes tumbling out of Alex in the incredibly tense next four minutes as they streak towards the wormhole, Ykkhr’s lifeless body on the ground behind them.

After she was kidnapped, Kara was sent to planet called Krypton, where she seemed to live a pretty great life until the Daxamites descended out of the sky and destroyed the entire planet. Kara evacuated with her family, but the Daxamites captured them, murdering her family and holding her as a prisoner of war until Alex rescued her.

There’s a whole hell of a lot missing from that story, but Alex isn’t really in a sharing mood. She’s grim and hard, already in battle mode.

“They’re coming for her,” she says, as the wormhole finally, finally, spirals open in front of them. “We have to stop them.”

Maggie’s not really interested in fighting yet another evil galactic power—the Cardassians were quite enough for one lifetime—but she looks over her shoulder at Ykkhr’s battered corpse, and she thinks about Kara dancing in the sunshine of Bajor, and she looks at the set of Alex’s jaw, and she understands that either the Daxamites will be defeated or Alex will die.

So Maggie activates the comms as soon as they’re through the wormhole. “Battle stations,” she says, knowing her voice is ringing out into Ops. “Deep Space Nine to battle stations.”


	8. Battle Stations

Sam Arias, Henshaw, and Olsen are waiting for them when they dock. Arias quickly walks into the shuttle, scanning Ykkhr’s body and pronouncing him dead, which of course Maggie already knows. Alex is talking a mile a minute at Henshaw and Olsen, but she keeps skipping the important parts.

“Quiet!” Maggie uses her field commander voice, and it works beautifully. Everyone freezes in place. “Arias, arrange for transport to the morgue, and then meet us in the conference room. Commander, take Alex directly there. Olsen, bring the schematics of the station’s defenses. I’ll gather the senior staff for a war meeting in the conference room. Now.”

They all start to follow her orders, but then she holds up a hand. “Wait. Alex. Should Kara be there?”

Alex takes a deep breath, looking right into her eyes. Maggie can read everything in her face—the need to protect Kara from this knowledge warring with the need to protect Kara from the attack.

“If she can help,” Maggie says softly, way too intimately for this airlock, “then she should be there.”

Alex nods, once, a little robotically.

“Commander, get Kara and bring her with you,” Maggie snaps. “Let’s go, people.”

It’s less than ten minutes before everyone is gathered in the conference room. Henshaw is at the head of the table, with Alex next to him, and Kara on her other side. Maggie takes the seat across from Alex. Olsen, Schott, and Arias slide into their chairs, and Lena carefully takes a seat as far away from Alex as she can.

“Major Sawyer,” Henshaw says, his voice deep and strained. “Your briefing.”

Maggie resists the urge to stand up and pace. She tells them about the distress signal, and about Ykkhr.

“He’s not a species we’ve encountered before,” Arias says, “but it’s clear he was fatally wounded in the attack. He has plasma burns across most of his body, plus immense blunt force trauma.”

“He said the people that attacked him were from Daxam.” Maggie pauses for a moment. “That name meant something to Lieutenant Danvers.”

Alex starts, clearly surprised to hear Maggie using that title. But this is a military mission now, and there’s no time for official word from Starfleet about her reinstatement. In battle, you give command to your best soldiers, and Maggie’s surprised to find that she would trust Alex to watch her back in a fight.

That makes two people on this station, then.

“The Daxamites are an imperialist power in the gamma quadrant,” Alex says. “They give no mercy. They will wipe out an entire race to colonize a desirable planet without hesitation. If a race is too much trouble, they’ll simply destroy the planet itself, rather than leave a potentially hostile adversary. They’re technologically advanced, and morally bankrupt.”

Schott shudders in his chair, and Arias looks grim. Olsen is impossible to read, as always.

“They destroyed my planet.”

Six heads whip around to where Kara is sitting. She looks small, afraid, like the light inside of her is dimming. Her tattoos are flashing dark and foreboding.

“I lived on a planet called Krypton. The people were scientists, and poets. Brilliant philosophers. Kind and generous. The land was fertile, and gentle. It was a heaven. I missed my first family, of course, but I was taken in by a family that loved me. I was happy, there. I loved it.”

Everyone is watching Kara, but Maggie’s watching Alex as she flicks between jealousy and compassion. She’s holding a stylus in her hand, to go with the pad in front of her, but as Maggie watches, she snaps it in half and doesn’t even seem to notice.

“And then the Daxamites came. They didn’t give a warning. They obliterated one of our cities, and then demanded that the entire population flee or they’d do the same to rest of us. We fought back—we had great technology, and planetary defenses—but we were a peaceful people. They knew war, and we didn’t.”

Everyone seems to be holding their breath, but Maggie already knows what happened. Kara’s family didn’t get the chance the Bajorans got. They weren’t put under occupation and forced to fight for their lives. They were eradicated, all at once.

All Kara says is, “They showed no mercy,” but everyone understands.

She keeps going, her voice shaking with it. “My parents, and anyone with access to ships, tried to evacuate the planet. The ship I was on, we were captured. They were killing everyone, but they…they figured out that I wasn’t born Kryptonian, that I was a hybrid.” She gestures at her tattoos, and Maggie begins to understand. The Kryptonians had shaped this human child in their own image. “They…they kept me. Alive.”

“They imprisoned her,” Alex snarls. “They experimented on her. They kept her locked in a cage, and they hurt her.”

Both Henshaw and Kara reach out to Alex, trying to lay calming hands on her, but Maggie knows that won’t work.

Maggie left her father on his deathbed to murder his killers, because she couldn’t just sit there and watch him die. She understands that calming hands aren’t what Alex needs right now. She needs a phaser in her hand and a clear target. And, in all likelihood, she’s about to get it.

“What kind of experiments were they running on you, Kara?” It’s Lena’s voice, somehow both kind and clinical.

“Kryptonians had powers that the Daxamites didn’t,” Kara says. “Certain abilities that the Daxamites wanted. They found out the Kryptonians had been able to give them to me, and they wanted to learn how.”

“Did they?”

“I don’t know. But I don’t…they weren’t done with me. So maybe not.”

Lena nods.

“These abilities,” Olsen says, his voice low and smooth. “Are they worth coming across the quadrant for?”

Kara shrugs, but Alex nods.

“Under the right conditions, Kryptonians can fly without ships, shoot without phasers, and destroy without bombs. Indestructible humanoid weapons.”

Olsen raises what passes for his eyebrows. “So we can expect them to want to finish their research.”

“Where we found Ykkhr is not their territory,” Alex says, clicking to a map on her pad and beaming it to the big display. “It’s a hard year’s travel from their territory.”

“Which means they followed you,” Henshaw pronounces. “Across the quadrant.”

Alex nods. “They must have.”

“So we have to assume they know about the wormhole, and are preparing to come through,” Arias says. “They could be here at any time.”

Talk quickly turns to the station’s defenses, which aren’t great. The station has a shield, and some phasers and torpedoes, but it can’t move very quickly, and the weapons aren’t very powerful. The station began its life as a Cardassian ore processing plant, an orbital satellite that helped the Cardassians strip every valuable thing from Bajor. It was never meant to be a defensive stronghold.

“The closest Federation or allied ships are a few days away,” Henshaw says. “And Bajor can’t muster many ships.”

Maggie almost snorts. That’s an understatement. The resistance was almost all surface fighting. There were a few old shuttles that they managed to steal and use to kill Cardassians, but they never went further than Bajor’s moons. It was a battle for a planet, that didn’t leave the planet. And with the Federation coming in, Bajor didn’t prioritize building a fleet after independence. That’s what Starfleet was for.

And now Starfleet is saying they can’t defend Bajor from the first major invasion force coming through the wormhole?

Maggie’s ready to throw something.

“I’d like to talk with Kara,” Lena says, cutting through the very depressing schematics. “To learn what I can about them, to see if we can design anything that will help.”

Alex looks like she’s about to balk—the two seem to be at an uneasy truce, after the casino, but Maggie’s sure that Alex is about a million lightyears away from trusting Lena—but Kara’s nodding. “Of course,” she says, and Alex doesn’t protest out loud.

The meeting breaks up. Schott runs off to calibrate the phasers, Olsen to gather his security forces, Arias to do the same with her volunteer medics. Maggie’s in charge of evacuating civilians to Bajor, or further. Henshaw is to coordinate with Starfleet.

Kara and Lena hustle off to Lena’s lab, leaving Alex standing alone in the conference room.

Alex, who doesn’t have a job right now. Not Starfleet, but not _not_ Starfleet. Operating within the bounds of Starfleet protocols but not truly inside of them. A position Maggie knows well.

Maggie pauses at the threshold.

“Alex.”

Alex whips her head over, sure everyone had left her. “Don’t you have some evacuations to manage?”

Maggie ignores her cutting tone, able by now to see past all of the fronts she puts up, down into the terrified core of who she is.

“I could use some help,” is what she says, because the rest of it can’t be spoken yet.

“I brought them here.” Alex’s voice is dull but there’s some pleading underneath. “I just wanted to save her.”

Maggie crosses over to where Alex is standing, her boots silent on the hideous carpet. She reaches out, not to calm Alex down, but to stand alongside her.

“Come help me evacuate the civilians,” she says, soft but firm. “And then I’ll help you stop them.”

Alex looks down at her outstretched hand and, after a long pause, puts her hand in Maggie’s. It’s callused and hard, and she treats Maggie like she’s strong. Capable. Forceful.

“Okay,” she says. “Let’s do it.”

* * *

Maggie has to hand it to the Federation. What would be an absolutely chaotic evacuation in anyone else’s hands is handled with calm, efficient professionalism. Everyone who isn’t in uniform is hustled off the station within a few hours. Bajorans are sent down to the planet, and the assortment of others board the fastest ships currently docked at the station and head deeper into Federation territory. Arias sends Ruby back to Earth on the same ship as Dr. Danvers. Cat Grant refuses to evacuate, for reasons Maggie can’t understand, saying that the bar is all she has. Maggie’s pretty sure that won’t matter when Cat’s dead, but there’s no arguing with her. Cat promises each of them a bottle of Aldebaran whiskey when the danger has passed, which seems to perk Alex up a bit.

Maggie and Olsen raid the armory. Starfleet, Cardassian, and Bajoran phaser rifles are handed out indiscriminately, although Maggie straps her favorite Bajoran rifle to her back before it can be given out. Alex takes a Cardassian weapon without complaint, simply shrugging when Maggie offers her a Federation weapon.

“A trigger’s a trigger,” she says. “I’m not picky.”

Maggie, who’s fired enough Cardassian weapons for a lifetime, doesn’t press the issue. Call her superstitious, but she’s always felt best with a Bajoran weapon in her hand. Although, of course, there’s always the zing of perverse pleasure in turning a weapon meant to kill her into the harbinger of Cardassian doom.

And then everything is ready. Certain decks are closed off, allowing them divert power from life support to the shields—Alex’s idea, of course. The replicators are turned off, and Arias passes out field rations, which are absolutely disgusting. The shields are primed, they’ve sent probes through the wormhole to detect incoming ships, the phasers and canons are ready to go.

The waiting is the worst part. They don’t know if the Daxamites will come today, or tomorrow, or next month, or never. If they even found the wormhole. If that was the word Ykkhr had said, with his last grunting breath. If they really did follow Alex across half the quadrant, just to find one young woman with a few powers that Maggie’s never seen her display.

They sleep in shifts, not in their own quarters but in battle-ready stations in key locations. Maggie spends a fitful few hours on a cot in Henshaw’s office, the one attached to Ops, tossing and turning and trying not to shoot herself with the rifle she won’t take her hand off of.

It feels just like being back in the resistance, except then they’d usually been in charge of the timing. That was the whole thing with being the guerilla force, and she’d loved it. Charging down a hillside in the middle of the night, emerging from a placid lake with a rifle in hand, blowing up a supply convoy, slipping up behind a sentry and slitting his throat before he could make a sound.

She’s never liked being on the receiving end of surprises, and this is no exception.

No one’s really seen Kara or Lena. Maggie assumes that whatever Lena’s trying hasn’t been successful, or she’d have heard about it by now. Lena’s a good fighter—she’s had thirteen lifetimes to learn it—and she hopes that Lena will join them in combat when it comes to it.

She hopes they live long enough for combat. That the Daxamites don’t have the firepower to blow the entire station into dust from a distance.

But they want Kara.

They want Kara, and they’ll have to come and get her.

Maggie’s pretty sure she’ll have her fight.

* * *

She finds Alex on the upper level of the promenade, staring out the one window that points directly at the wormhole.

“We have probes out there, you know,” Maggie says, coming up silently behind her, but Alex doesn’t jump.

She’s good.

“I know,” she says, her voice dull with exhaustion and tension. “I know.”

Alex is wearing someone’s extra Starfleet uniform—Maggie suspects it’s Schott’s. Henshaw had ordered that everyone who was likely to face combat be in either Federation or Bajoran uniform, so there would be less of a chance of friendly fire in the worst moments. The shoulders of the shirt Alex is wearing are yellow, incorrectly signaling that she’s a member of the engineering team, and she’s pinned her communication badge over her heart, just like everyone else.

She hasn’t put the two pips on her collar that would signal her rank as Lieutenant. Her collar is bare, blank. Her entire appearance is summing up her contradictions; Starfleet but not anymore, deserter but back. Lieutenant but not. 

“Come with me,” Maggie says, making up her mind at once. She takes Alex’s arm and pulls her, gently but firmly, down the staircase, across the promenade, and into the temple.

The shrine to the Prophets is there. Everything valuable was evacuated to Bajor, of course, but the rudimentary shrine remains. It’s quiet inside. Red panels and curtains do their best to erase the clinical feeling of _space station_ in this room, and Maggie can feel the echoes of thousands of prayers ringing across her skin.

“I’m not really one for prayer.” Alex looks uneasy, hesitant. She doesn’t know what to do with her hands, but Maggie just shakes her head.

She pulls a few large pillows against a wall, and sinks down onto them, resting her back against the wall and pulling her knees up to her chest. “We’re not here to pray,” she says, her voice as soft and reverent as it should be in this, the temple closest to the celestial home of the Prophets. “We’re here to sit.”

“I’m not really one for sitting,” Alex says wryly, but she sinks down onto the pillows next to Maggie anyway.

“They’ll come when they come,” Maggie says with a sageness she absolutely does not feel. “And we’ll be ready for them.”

Alex thunks her head against the wall, hard. “I hope so.”

She raises her head to thunk it again, and Maggie reaches out—reflexes always lightning fast—and slips her palm between Alex’s head and the wall. “Hey! Stop.”

Alex’s head is now cradled in Maggie’s palm, and it’s only as she slowly rolls her head against Maggie’s hand, turning to look her question in Maggie’s eyes that Maggie realizes the intimacy of the movement.

“Be careful,” she murmurs, feeling Alex’s silky hair run through her fingers. “We need this brain in tact.”

Alex just blinks at her. She’s breathing high in her chest, like when they spar.

Maggie’s seen that look before. She’s given that look before. She should pull her hand away, stand up and brush it off, and go back to Ops. But instead she just stays there, in the holy quiet of the temple, and lets her thumb brush against Alex.

“Can I ask you a question?”

Alex nods, mostly with her eyes, so she doesn’t disturb her head, cradled so tenderly in Maggie’s palm.

“Why me?”

Alex blinks her confusion into the air between them, and Maggie smiles at her own inability to think properly in the thickness of their breath.

“There were a million people on the station who would have been your friend, but you picked me. I was mean to you, but you kept coming back.”

“Oh,” Alex breathes.

“Why me?”

Alex presses her lips together, considering.

Maggie slides her hand down from Alex’s head to her neck, then down her arm to grasp, solid and steady, around her elbow.

“I’m not the person I was when I left,” Alex says, her eyes glancing between Maggie’s eyes and Maggie’s hand on her arm. “All the Starfleet people, they’d have wanted me to be just like them. Unchanged. Un—unscarred.”

Maggie nods. She’d seen it over and over in the resistance, when new fighters would meet back up with friends and family from before. Everyone from their old life wanted to ignore their trauma, to pretend it didn’t exist.

Eventually, most people stopped seeing anyone who wasn’t a solider. It was just easier that way.

“There’s that look in their eyes,” Maggie whispers. “That pity. The wish that you were like before.”

Alex nods. “I’ve felt damaged for a long time. Even Kara—sometimes I’d tell her to close her eyes and hide while I did what I had to. She was always…it was always so hard after. She’d have that look, and I would just…” She shrugs. “I just kept doing it.”

Maggie nods.

Alex—slowly, almost fearfully—covers Maggie’s hand with her own, closing Maggie’s fingers in a warm embrace.

“I feel damaged all the time, but not with you. You—you always looked at me with respect. Even when you hated me.”

Maggie chuckles, and Alex grins. She’s right.

“Being around you—I don’t feel damaged. When I’m with you, I feel like I’m a survivor. Like I’m strong.”

Maggie wants to say so many things. _You are strong_ , and _we’re both survivors_ , and _I see you_ , but she’s never been one for talking.

So she does the purest, clearest thing she can. She shuffles a little on her pillows, and she drops her head onto Alex’s shoulder. She closes her eyes, letting her forehead nestle into Alex’s neck.

“Wake me up if they come,” she says, and she lets her body fully relax.

She knows from the way that Alex sucks in a breath, and then presses a cheek to the top of her head, that Alex understands what she’s saying: that Maggie knows that she’s strong, that she’s not damaged but battle forged.

Alex seems to understand, from the soft movement of her hand on Maggie’s, and the way she settles her body to better hold Maggie’s weight, that Maggie’s trust—to guard her at her most vulnerable—is a gift, and a promise.

“I’ll keep watch,” Alex pledges, solid and steady and tender, and Maggie slides towards sleep.

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Art by the amazing [@IronicPotential](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ironicpotential/pseuds/ironicpotential). You can find all of her illustrations in once place [here!](https://t.co/0cIKwAI5U9?amp=1)  
> 


	9. A Good Day to Die

It’s three days before one of the probes on the other side of the wormhole bleats out an alarm, and then falls deadly silent.

“Battle stations,” Henshaw intones into the comms. “They’re coming.”

Maggie, already at her station in Ops, cracks her knuckles before double checking the rifle slung across her back, the phaser on her hip, and the knives all up and down her body. She nods at Henshaw, and he nods back at her. He has a rifle and a phaser too, but she’s not sure that he needs them. She wonders if she’ll die without ever learning his secret.

Alex appears at her elbow, serious and focused. Maggie’s seen that look a hundred times, in veteran fighters facing a superior force. The fighters who know that quick thinking can overcome brute strength, but that the odds are bad for each individual soldier. It’s the look says, I think we can win, but I don’t expect to be there to see it.

Maggie finds herself grasping at Alex’s forearm. She feels the sleek hardness of a knife under her fingertips, and applauds Alex for the placement of a throwing knife.

“Don’t do anything stupid,” she mutters, as the wormhole begins to open.

Alex grimaces at her. “Today is a good day to die,” she intones, like it’s supposed to be a joke, but it isn’t.

Maggie shakes her head, remembering their bat’leth fight in the holodeck. “No. You’re on a Bajoran station, you have the follow the Bajoran rules: Stay alive. Kill Cardassians.”

Alex’s lips quirk into a little smile. “Or Daxamites, as it may be.”

Maggie shrugs, smiling back at her. “The who is flexible. The what isn’t.” She blinks, suddenly serious. “I mean it, Alex. No heroics. Follow orders. Stay alive.”

Alex takes a long beat, looking into Maggie’s eyes for something.

“Okay,” she finally says, squeezing Maggie’s hand with hers. “Okay.”

Maggie doesn’t believe her, but ten ships are pouring out of the wormhole, so she gets to work.

Henshaw goes through the motions, like they don’t know it’s an attack. He hails them, and to Maggie’s surprise the Daxamites accept the invitation to talk face-to-face. The display screen snaps on to show the interior of one of their ships. There are three people in the frame; two seated, an older man and woman, and a younger man standing behind them. Their chairs seem more like thrones than anything else.

“Greetings,” Henshaw says, his weapons carefully out of the frame. “My name is Commander Henshaw, and this is Deep Space Nine. What brings you through the wormhole?”

“I am Queen Rhea of Daxam,” the woman says, haughty and imperial and ice cold. “You have something of mine, Commander Henshaw.”

Henshaw plays his part perfectly—acting surprised, confused, a bit slow on the uptake, while Maggie, Alex, and the Ops team scan deep into the heart of the Daxamite ships. All ten are loaded with canons, phasers, and all kinds of devastating weapons. They have good shields, but Schott sends a message that flashes on everyone’s consoles that he’s already found a weakness in their shield grid.

He might be a total dweeb, but he’s fucking good at his job.

Next to Maggie, Alex sighs with relief.

“What?” Maggie hisses out of the corner of her mouth, careful not to be picked up by the comms.

Instead of answering verbally, a message flashes across Maggie’s console, and everyone else’s. **_Their transporters aren’t strong enough to get through our shields_** , the message says. **_They’ll have to come take her in person._**

Maggie makes eye contact with Alex, and nods a promise.

Over their dead bodies.

Queen Rhea seems to be growing tired of Henshaw. “Give me the girl, or we’ll come take her by force. I think you can agree that your spindly little station is no match for our warships.”

Henshaw continues to prevaricate, but Maggie can see that he’s getting messages on his console that she’s not seeing. She’s pretty sure they’re from Lena.

Suddenly Maggie’s station lights up. “Incoming,” she calls, but the phaser blast sails past the station.

“That was a warning,” Queen Rhea says. “The next will not miss. Drop your shields immediately or you will be destroyed.”

Another message flashes across Henshaw’s console, and Maggie can see the smallest corner of his mouth curl up, just a little bit. She hears a quick intake of breath beside her, and knows that Alex has seen it too.

“I won’t do that,” he says in his true booming voice, finally standing straight and staring directly into Queen Rhea’s eyes. “If you attempt to board my station, we will not hold our fire, and we will shoot to kill. Consider this your final warning.”

Maggie blinks. Federation never shoots to kill. It’s always stunners. She looks quickly to Alex, who shrugs, eyes wide.

Okay, then.

Queen Rhea barks an order to the young man standing behind her, and the video abruptly cuts off.

Henshaw quickly shifts his comm channel to the one that will blare out of each person’s comm badge. “Daxamites won’t be affected by the stunning capacity of our phasers,” he says. “Set all phasers to kill. It may incapacitate them, or it may kill them, we’re not sure. But your orders are to shoot on sight. This is an invasion, and we will treat it as such.”

Maggie sees the fear in Schott’s eyes, and Vasquez’s, and everyone else in Ops wearing a Starfleet uniform. They’ve never killed before. Not like this.

She steps forward. “It’s them or us,” she says. “I know you don’t want to kill, but you’ve been trained for it, and this is the time to use that training. It’s a horrible thing to do, but we need all of you alive at the end of this. Not just for yourselves, but for Bajor, and the Federation.”

Schott takes a deep, wobbling breath, but his nod is firm. He palms the phaser at his waist. “Yes, ma’am,” he says, and she’s proud that his voice doesn’t tremble.

“If it gets bad,” Alex says into her ear. “I’m going to Kara.”

Maggie nods, agreeing to the question that Alex didn’t ask. “I’ll watch your back.”

Alex gives her that look again—deep and searching, before she nods back.

They don’t have to say it. They’ve both fought enough battles that they get it.

Ride or die.

* * *

Maggie runs down a corridor, coughing at the acrid taste of smoke in the air. Part of the wall here is missing, and something is sparking dangerously, but she can’t deal with that now. Hoping that the fire suppression systems are still functional, she doesn’t even slow her pace. She’s hot on Alex’s heels, and they need to make good time.

The fighting is fierce on the promenade, and Olsen has just called Ops for reinforcements. Maggie, Alex, and a few security officers are answering the call, splitting up to cover the two different routes to the promenade.

The Daxamite ships are keeping up constant barrage of phaser and torpedo fire, making the station feel like a constant earthquake. Schott is firing back, digging into the weakness in their shields, but it’s a relative stalemate outside. It’s a warzone inside. Daxamite ships have managed to dock at multiple airlocks, and soldiers have forced their way onto the station in huge numbers. During their run towards the promenade, Maggie’s been thrown into more walls than she can count, and the station is taking heavy damage, but the shields are holding. For now.

Alex skids to a stop at the end of the corridor, and Maggie nearly slams into her. Fighting in the narrow, dark hallways of a space station is totally different from fighting down on a planet, and Maggie’s having trouble adapting. But, luckily, Alex can navigate the twisted corridors with a rifle in her hand like she was born to it.

Alex makes a series of hand gestures that Maggie doesn’t understand, but she guesses that it means there are Daxamites around the corner. She nods, hoping she’s right, and Alex counts down from three on her fingers.

They both whirl around the corner at the same instant, Maggie firing to the left while Alex goes right.

Maggie shoots one of the Daxamites in front of her before he even lifts his weapon, but then the other three are on her in a flash. One wrestles her rifle out of her hands, and she manages to pull her phaser out of her holster and shoot him in the face before that too is knocked away.

She pulls both of her knives and launches herself at the two who are left—a tall one and a wide one. She has to keep them off balance enough so that they can’t use their own rifles. She kicks the rifle out of Wide’s hands when Tall does her the favor of hauling her off her feet, and then she swirls her body around, throwing Tall to the ground with a sickening crunch. She throws herself at Wide, feinting with her knife in a move that never fails to distract Alex. He takes the bait just like Alex always does, keeping his eyes on the knife he can see, and Maggie manages to duck under his guard and slash him along the ribs with the knife hidden in her other hand.

He screams, and she grapples with Tall again, who has risen, enormous and furious. But he’s slow—a lumbering strength—and Maggie’s spent her entire life learning how to out-quick bigger opponents. She eels out of his grip, lands three solid blows to his body, absorbing one that makes her head ring and her eyes water, before she finds her opening. She kicks between his legs, which lowers his head in pain, and she slits his throat without hesitation.

He goes down in a spray of blood, and she whirls, throwing her knife into Wide’s eye with perfect accuracy.

She straightens from her crouch, turning to check on Alex, who has been silently fighting a few yards away.

She sees Alex on the ground, but before Maggie can reach her to help, Alex flicks her wrist and Maggie doesn’t even see the knife fall into her hand, but suddenly the Daxamite in front of her is falling, the knife protruding from his throat. Alex pulls the phaser out of his hand and uses it to shoot the last Daxamite standing.

Nice.

Maggie takes the last few steps over, and offers Alex her hand. Alex takes it, grimacing at the slick feel of blood coating Maggie’s palm.

“Yours?” Alex asks, as Maggie hauls her to her feet.

“No. You hit?”

“No.”

Maggie nods. Together they’ve taken out seven soldiers. Not bad for two minutes of work.

Maggie pulls her knives out of Tall and Wide, wiping them clean on the Daxamite uniforms and stowing them back away. She tries to get as much of Tall’s blood off her as she can, but some of it has seeped into her uniform. Maggie turns to the fallen Daxamites and efficiently strips the rifles off the bodies, slinging two onto her back. She retrieves her phaser, holstering it before picking up her original Bajoran rifle, cradling it in her dominant right hand. After a second of consideration, she pulls a final Daxamite rifle from under the body of the first man she’d shot, and she settles it in her left hand. Alex is gaping at her, but Maggie gestures for her to do the same.

“Battlefield rules,” Maggie orders. “Leave nothing for them to find.” Alex looks a little queasy at the idea of stripping the dead, but she does what she’s told.

Maggie doesn’t spare her any pity. Weapons don’t grow on trees, and it’s not like she’s asking Alex to strip them of clothing, boots, or jewelry. Maggie’s had to do that before too, of course, and it’s always particularly awful.

They hit a few more pockets of soldiers, but they manage to take them all out with their rifles. Maggie’s grateful for the reprieve. She’s not quite in the fighting shape she used to be in.

They finally make it to the promenade, and it’s carnage. The ground is strewn with bodies—Daxamite, Starfleet, and Bajoran. The phaser fire is loud, and there’s smoke in the air. There are pockets of fighters up and down the entire promenade. Maggie points to a group of Daxamites who seem to be laying siege to the tailor shop, and Alex nods. They advance on the group as quietly as they can, duck behind a pillar, and take them out from behind. Another group of Daxamites is advancing on the bar, but Cat Grant throws a flaming bottle of alcohol at them, and they scatter with a loud yell.

“Explains the smoke,” Alex coughs, and Maggie wants to laugh.

They make their way around the promenade, clearing as many pockets of Daxamites as they can. Fighting with Alex feels more natural than Maggie could have imagined. Alex moves swiftly, silently, and with deadly purpose, like a panther. When Alex is up against her hip, Maggie feels like they’re a single entity, a two-headed killing machine. Even with Olsen, it’s never felt like this. Maggie trusts him with her life—quite literally—but they’ve never fought like this.

Olsen, of course, doesn’t use weapons.

Maggie spies him in hand to hand combat with three Daxamites. He’s holding his own, but she can tell that he’s tiring. She and Alex advance on them, and they manage to shoot two of them before having to duck behind cover. By the time it’s safe to pop her head back out, Olsen has dispatched the third, and he’s scowling at her.

“Help someone who needs it, will you,” he grunts at her, and she flips him off, the rude human motion she learned from Arias. Something happens to his arms—they grow until they’re each almost six feet long, and they reach out to slap the rifles out of the hands of several advancing Daxamites.

“What is he?” Alex hisses in her ear as they wait for another group of Daxamites to get into range.

“Shapeshifter,” Maggie grunts, setting her sight on the lead soldier.

“Oh,” Alex says faintly. “Of course.”

Maggie grins, rising from her crouch and shooting with both rifles at once. She hits her target and he goes down, but the return fire is faster than she thought it would be. Alex has to yank her down to safety, but not before a blast grazes her arm.

“Idiot,” Alex mutters, pulling a compression bandage out of her tactical vest. “Stay alive, remember? Kill Daxamites.” She wraps it around Maggie’s arm, pulling tight enough that Maggie grunts in pain.

“Not a good day to die anymore?”

But Alex isn’t joking. “Not for you,” she says, and there’s something so deadly serious and tender in her eyes that Maggie wants to pull her back.

But they’re in the middle of fighting for their lives, so she just rises from her crouch, sights on a Daxamite, and fires.

* * *

A few minutes later, a blur of activity forms inside one of the shops that line the promenade. Maggie squints, and finally makes out Henshaw, locked in battle with what looks like five Daxamites. But he’s…he’s taller. And stronger. He’s throwing grown men around like rag dolls, and his eyes are red.

“What is he?” she hisses to Alex.

“Martian,” Alex grunts, jamming a knife into the solider who was trying to sneak up behind him. He falls to the ground, and she shoots him in the chest.

“Oh,” Maggie says faintly.

She has a lot of questions, but Henshaw whirls out of sight, and she tries to forget.

* * *

They get pinned down in the café. They’re using some tables as cover but it’s not enough. They’re about to make a run for it, Alex is counting down, but when she gets to “two,” a group of Daxamites spring up out of nowhere, surrounding them, rifles pointed right at their faces.

“Drop your weapons,” one growls, and Maggie recognizes him as the young man from the comm video.

“Mon-El of Daxam,” Alex drawls, holding her rifle in a lazy grip. “What a pleasure.”

“That’s Prince Mon-El of Daxam to you, scum,” one of the men grunts, kicking Alex in the ribs.

But Mon-El of Daxam, whoever he is, isn’t as dumb as his crony. “How do you know who I am,” he says, leaning down close. “Who are you, girl?”

“Your worst nightmare,” Alex says, as Maggie shoots him in the chest.

There’s a moment of chaos, and then the smoke clears. All five Daxamites are down, and Maggie celebrates for a few seconds before she realizes two things: (1) Mon-El of Daxam is wearing armor, and he’s still alive, and (2) She’s been shot, and it hurts like hell.

“He’s alive,” she coughs, and Alex lashes out like a snake, knocking the gun out of his hands.

“Cover me,” she says, and Maggie forces herself up, trying to block out the pain. She manages to shoot two more advancing soldiers, but only one of her arms is working. She can’t figure out where the pain is coming from, which she’s pretty sure is a bad sign.

Or, is not hurting at all the bad sign? She knows this, she should remember, but she can’t at just this moment.

Her vision starts to swim.

“Alex,” she coughs. It’s hard to take a breath. That’s interesting.

“Just a second,” Alex says from behind her. Maggie had expected Alex to simply shoot Mon-El of Daxam in the head, but she seems to be doing something much more complex and time-consuming.

Maggie blinks, trying to focus. She needs to be able to see. She has to protect Alex.

She can feel Alex against her back, warm and solid. She hasn’t been hit. All of her blood is inside of her body still, Maggie thinks, which is probably good. Not like Maggie. Some of her blood seems to be all over the place. She can see it smeared on her rifle, and on her hands.

She shoots another Daxamite, but it takes four shots for her to hit him, because her eyes don’t seem to feel like seeing.

“Alex.”

“Okay, I got him. Let’s try to get him to Ops.”

Maggie can’t go to Ops. Maggie can’t go anywhere.

“Alex.”

“What? Mag—oh my god. Maggie!”

Maggie wishes her eyes would keep working. She’d like to see Alex’s face for longer. She’s never seen her look like that before—concerned and loving and terrifying—and she wishes she could study Alex’s face for another hundred years.

But, instead, everything is fading to black.


	10. Yellow Sun

Maggie gasps, rocketing up. Her heart is going a million beats a minute, and the adrenaline coursing through her body makes her feel like she’s on fire.

“Easy,” someone says, grabbing at her.

Maggie turns her head. It’s Sam Arias, and she doesn’t look particularly concerned that Maggie’s going to have a heart attack. “You’re fine,” Arias says. “You lost a lot of blood, and your heart stopped for a while, but you’re fine now.”

Maggie shakes her head a little bit. These Federation doctors are something else. She’s pretty sure that means she _died_ , and Sam is like, you’re fine! Wild.

“Alex,” she says, both a question and a demand.

“Alex,” Arias calls. “She’s back.”

Alex rushes over, and she looks terrible. Soot streaked, covered in blood, antsy and furious. She reaches out her arms, and Maggie finds herself enveloped in them. Alex smells like battle—phaser fire, sweat, and hot blood—but Maggie would happily stay here forever.

“You okay?”

Alex pulls back enough to look at her, scowling. “Am _I_ okay? Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.”

“You _died_.”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought, but Dr. Starfleet over there said I’m fine.”

She hears Arias choke on a laugh behind her, and Alex’s hands tighten on her arms. “Okay, new fire fight protocol—”

“What is with you Federation monkeys and your protocols.”

Alex blithely ignores her. “New protocol,” she says, louder this time. “If you’ve been shot and you’re dying, tell someone.”

“I was trying!”

“You said, _Alex. Excuse me, Alex_?” She makes her voice all high pitched and insulting, which is rude because Maggie’s pretty sure her voice is deeper than Alex’s anyway.

“I did not.”

“You did not say, Alex, I’m fucking shot and I’m dying, pay attention.”

Maggie hums. She can’t argue with that.

“Next time, say that.”

“Next time? You planning on me getting shot again?”

“Who knows. For an elite fighter, you sure got shot twice in five minutes.”

Maggie smacks her arm. “Protecting your slow ass. And I took out those guys in the corridor way faster than you did.”

But Alex just pulls her back in, and Maggie lets herself breathe in the smell of Alex’s neck, hiding under the curtain of her hair.

“Stay alive, Mags,” Alex whispers into her ear. “I need you stay alive, okay?”

Maggie’s not sure what comes over her. Maybe the adrenaline coursing through her system, or the fact that in four seconds Arias completely healed the wound that killed her, or maybe how tight Alex’s arms are around her. But she turns her head just a little, and leaves a soft kiss on Alex’s neck.

“Deal,” she whispers into Alex’s skin, and Alex just holds her.

* * *

Arias makes them both take a drink of water and clean the blood off their weapons before they can leave sickbay and return to the fight. Olsen has guards stationed at the doors, and just as they’re about to let Maggie and Alex back out, one holds up a hand. “Friendlies incoming,” he says, and they all back up to let the rush of people into sickbay.

As soon as the doors close behind the group, Alex is leaping away from Maggie’s side and jumping into the center of the group. It isn’t until one of the security officers moves that Maggie sees that it’s Kara, sandwiched between Lena, Schott, and Olsen.

“You okay?” Lena asks Maggie, who is still absolutely caked in blood, and Maggie nods.

“Fine now.”

“Are any of you hurt?” Arias is clearly confused about why everyone is in sick bay when no one seems wounded. Two of the security officers have been hit, and Arias quickly passes them to her assistants.

“No, but we needed somewhere to share our plan.” Lena’s eyes are flashing, and Maggie straightens up. She knows that look.

That look means Lena Luthor has done something brilliant.

She holds up a box that’s been tucked under her arm. It’s not big, maybe six inches on all sides. It looks metal, and she’s holding it like it’s not heavy. “We need to use this to disperse lead throughout the station.”

“Lead?”

“Daxamites are allergic to it. We can pump out enough to make them all sick, or…” She gulps a little. “Or enough to kill them on the spot.”

Maggie blinks. “Wait, lead? Like, regular lead?”

Kara nods quickly. “Our ship was made of lead, and I remember that one of them dropped dead when they were pulling us out of it. And I had a necklace, from my mom,” a quick look at Alex, “my Kryptonian mom, and it was lead, and it burned Mon-El’s hand.”

Maggie whips her head over to Alex. “Prince Mon-El of Daxam?”

Alex nods. “He was one of the ones who had her.” Her voice is carefully controlled fury, and Maggie can’t help but be impressed that Alex didn’t shoot him in the face.

“We captured him,” she explains to the confused group. “Or, wait. Did we?”

Alex rolls her eyes. “Yes, while you were busy not telling me you were dying, we captured him. He’s incapacitated behind a forcefield in the back.”

No one else seems bothered that Maggie died.

“Okay, how do we release the lead?”

“We need to physically attach this adapter to the oxygen flow hub,” Lena says, because of course this war couldn’t be won without crawling through tiny corridors during a firefight.

“Okay,” Maggie says. “Lena, Olsen, and I will go do that. The rest of you, keep fighting down here. Alex, call Henshaw and tell him we have a prisoner. Try to exchange him for a cease fire.”

But Alex is shaking her head. “I should go with you.”

“We’ll be fine.”

“No,” Kara says, “I should go.”

Maggie, Olsen, Schott, and Arias all blink. “Um…”

Maggie’s not sure how to say, _stay put in here, tender holy creature_ , but Lena’s smiling.

“I’d like her with me,” she says, and she reaches into her pocket, pulls out an orb, and presses a button.

It glows with a bright yellow light. It reminds Maggie of crisp sunlight, but that’s not what’s surprising about it.

The tattoos on Kara’s face all flash, flipping through all of their colors in a microsecond. From opalescent white to electric blue to purpled black, and everything between, over and over.

And then Kara hovers. Her skin is glowing with the yellow light, and her tattoos are flashing, and she’s floating a foot above the ground.

“Lena made me a yellow sun,” she says, and Maggie has no idea what that means but she remembers Alex’s words from earlier. _Under the right conditions,_ _Kryptonians can fly without ships, shoot without phasers, and destroy without bombs. Indestructible humanoid weapons._

Okay. She’ll take it.

“Alright. Fine. Good. Alex and Kara, you’re with me and Lena. Olsen, stay here and coordinate the prisoner negotiations with Henshaw.”

Olsen nods.

“I need to get back to Ops,” Schott says, and the security officers volunteer to escort him.

“Stay safe, everyone,” Maggie says, looking carefully at Arias, Olsen, and Schott. “See you at the bar when this is all over.”

“Someone try to keep Cat from destroying all the good liquor,” Alex says, absently, as she straps her rifles more securely to her back.

“Yes, ma’am,” Arias says with a wink, and then they’re off.

* * *

* * *

Crawling through vents to get to the oxygen flow hub is definitely the worst part of space station combat.

Maggie would rather be shot again, she’s sure about that. It hadn’t felt great, but Alex had held her, and then hugged her, so overall she’d give it a five out of ten.

This, though, is a hard zero.

She’s crawling behind Lena, who is behind Alex, who is behind Kara. Lena’s calling out directions, and somehow crawling while holding the precious box. Maggie’s just mostly trying not to accidentally shoot her. Her butt feels incredibly exposed, but she’d tried crawling backwards and it really hadn’t worked, so now she’s just praying. The metal grating is biting into her palms and her knees feel raw, and where she was shot is starting to throb in a sharply painful way.

Fucking Kara is _floating_ , which is honestly just unfair.

Finally, they emerge into a chute that goes up and down, rather than across. “We need to go up five levels,” Lena says, and Maggie’s not a fan of ladders but she’ll take it over crawling.

Kara, of course, just fucking floats up.

But she’s able to watch their backs as they climb the stupid tiny ladders, so Maggie’s okay with it.

One more long, horrible crawl, and then they’ve made it to the junction.

“This will take a few minutes,” Lena says, already pulling the panel off the wall to expose the controls.

Kara nods, heading across the panel to guard her on the far side. Alex and Maggie both prop up their rifles, facing back the way they came. Alex’s shoulder is pressed into Maggie’s, and she finds herself leaning into the contact.

They’re both sitting with their legs crossed, and Alex’s free hand somehow comes to rest on Maggie’s thigh.

Maggie takes a few deep breaths, feeling the weight of it, letting it ground her. She gives herself a one second break from her vigilance, and she drops her forehead onto Alex’s shoulder, just for an instant.

When she straightens up, Alex twists a little bit, and Maggie can feel the barest brush of a kiss on her own shoulder. Cursing the thick layers of her uniform, Maggie tries to imagine what it must have felt like.

“How, um…” Alex’s voice is impossibly quiet in the hollow emptiness of the ventilation shaft. “How do Bajorans feel about same gender couples?”

Maggie presses her lips together, trying not to smile.

“How do Bajorans feel, or how do I feel?”

She can feel Alex rolling her eyes. “How do you, a Bajoran, feel?”

Maggie can hear Lena trying not to laugh behind her. After the whole incident with Lenara Khan, when Lena had almost run away with the woman who used to be her wife, back when Lena was the very male Torias Luthor and Lenara was his wife Nilani Khan, she can’t really talk. Bisexual symbionts shall not cast the first stone, and all.

“There wasn’t time for that type of policing in the resistance,” Maggie says. “If you were lucky enough to find comfort with someone, as long as they weren’t a collaborator, no one cared.”

“And now?”

Maggie takes a deep breath. Alex is the first person she’s been Maggie with in years and years.

“If I were lucky enough to find comfort with someone, I’d be stupid to let anything stop me from being with her.”

Alex sucks in a breath, and Maggie wants to tear her eyes away from the vent in front of them, but she won’t put them all at risk just to see what Alex’s eyes look like right now.

And then Lena says, “Done,” and it’s time to go.

Lena puts the wall panel back in place, and they make their way out of vents. They come out at the closest exit, and this time, without the precious box to protect and hide, they fight their way back to Ops through the normal corridors.

They finally make it into Ops—a few firefights and one hand-to-hand skirmish the worse for the wear, but everyone in tact—and Henshaw quickly calls Queen Rhea, putting her image up on the display.

“Are you ready to surrender, _Commander_?” She sneers, turning his title into an insult.

“No,” he says, his tone light and cheerful, and Maggie almost ruins it by laughing. “In fact, I was calling to ask you the same question.”

“Hand over the girl, and we’ll go. Continue to refuse, and we’ll murder your people one by one until she’s the last one left. We’ll have her either way, Commander.”

“I think you won’t, actually,” Kara says, and before Alex can stop her, she steps into view.

Except she doesn’t step. She floats. Queen Rhea gasps.

“You see, Rhea, I can now use my powers on board a station. Or a ship. So as you can imagine, you won’t be taking me anywhere.”

Kara glowers at the viewscreen, and Maggie thinks it’s a bit much until actual lasers burst out of her eyes, scorching the wall across Ops.

“Oh,” Maggie says faintly. Indestructible human weapon indeed.

“The kingdom of Daxam will not rest until you’re in our hands,” Rhea says, but she’s clearly shaken. She’d jumped a foot in the air when Kara had lasered, and everyone had seen it.

“About that kingdom,” Alex says, crossing into view. “We have your son. He’s alive, but I’d honestly be more than happy to kill him. That one’s gonna be your choice, lady.”

“And speaking of choices,” Henshaw says, finally playing their last, and best card. “With the push of this button, I’ll disperse a lethal amount of lead into the air of this station. Every single Daxamite aboard, including your son, will die instantly.”

He pauses for a long moment, and Maggie holds her breath.

“So the choice is yours, Queen Rhea. You can recall your soldiers, and your son, and never return through this wormhole again, or we can kill every one of your people, and your son, and when our reinforcements arrive in an hour, they’ll destroy every last one of your ships, including this one you sit on now.”

Maggie’s pretty sure he’s bluffing about the reinforcements, but he doesn’t have a tell like Alex does, so she can’t be sure.

“What’ll it be?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Art by the amazing [@IronicPotential](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ironicpotential/pseuds/ironicpotential). You can find all of her illustrations in once place [here!](https://t.co/0cIKwAI5U9?amp=1)  
> 


	11. Ensign

Rhea chooses to save her son, and her people, and her own neck. Maggie’s pretty sure she doesn’t actually care about her soldiers, though. She doesn’t ask for their bodies, and Henshaw has to force her to take them.

She agrees that if a single Daxamite ship so much as smells the wormhole again, they’ll be shot on sight. Maggie’s not sure she buys it, but the lead allergy thing is a true gift to the alpha quadrant.

When Mon-El is transferred back to his ship, he has a nasty broken nose, and horrible swelling under his eyes, and blood pouring out a split lip.

Maggie gives Alex a questioning look, and Alex just shrugs. “My hand slipped,” she says, and Maggie wants to kiss her.

* * *

They all meet up at Cat’s bar. It’s in shambles, and there are scorch marks all around, from the flaming defenses that, at least according to Cat, no Daxamite managed to breech.

She pours them tall glasses of Aldebaran whiskey, and Schott nearly chokes to death on his. Arias joins them for just a few minutes, clasping them all on the shoulder and drinking a raktajino without complaint, as her sickbay is filled to the brim with injured officers.

* * *

Maggie can’t sleep. She finds Alex wandering the promenade, staring at the spot where Maggie had died.

Maggie takes her by the hand, and wordlessly walks Alex back to the quarters she shares with Kara.

Before she can turn to go, Alex tugs on her hand, and pulls her into a kiss.

Maggie freezes, startled and surprised, but Alex’s hands are warm on her cheeks, and everything is suddenly still, like when the Prophets brush against her in the temple.

Alex still smells like phaser fire and blood, and she tastes like whiskey and French fries, and Maggie kisses her back until Kara opens the door, asking them to either break it up or to move out of her super hearing range.

Alex aims a kick at her, but Maggie just kisses her one more time before floating back to her own quarters.

* * *

The next day is taken up with tallies. How many injured, how many dead, how many Bajoran, how many Starfleet. Maggie volunteers to inform the families of the Bajoran dead, as Henshaw is doing for the Starfleet. He offered to do both, but she refuses him.

Bajorans should hear it from Bajorans.

They’re some of the hardest calls Maggie’s ever made in her life. She’s not sure how to tell someone that their loved one survived a Cardassian occupation to die on a Federation space station, murdered by aliens no one has seen before, defending a girl who could defend herself.

And then the station tallies from Schott. Bulkheads damaged, torpedoes used, conduits shattered, repair timelines, energy reserve capacities.

It’s exhausting. What should by all rights be a gaping wound in her stomach still throbs, even though Arias mostly healed it.

Maggie falls into her bed at the end of her shift, completely drained. Her quarters were untouched, but everything on the station still smells like smoke and phaser fire, and her pillow is no exception. She’s about to drop into what she hopes will be a dreamless sleep, when her door chimes.

She lumbers out of bed, already furious at whatever officer is daring to disturb her rest, but she pulls up short, the verbal lashing freezing on her tongue.

It’s Alex standing outside her door. She’s wearing the regulation Starfleet pajamas that Maggie’s seen Lena wear—a soft blue tank top and matching shorts. Her hair is light and fluffy, like it’s just dried after a shower. She looks exhausted, but there’s something hopeful twinkling in her eyes.

“Can I come in?”

Maggie steps back, speechless, and Alex pads into her quarters for the first time. Alex shucks off her slippers, and she scrunches her bare feet in the carpet.

“I thought maybe your injury was hurting,” Alex says, and it’s so clearly an excuse.

Maggie’s never been one for games, though. She takes Alex by the hand and walks backwards, pulling Alex toward her bed.

She lays down on the hard Cardassian mattress before pulling her shirt up to her ribs. “See for yourself,” she breathes, and Alex sits down next to her, her eyes glued to Maggie’s exposed torso.

Her fingers are trembling as they ghost over Maggie’s skin. There should be a horrible, mottled, gaping wound, but there’s not so much as a scratch.

“Looks good,” Alex murmurs, and Maggie pulls her down.

“Shut up,” she orders, and, for once in her life, Alex obeys.

* * *

An hour or so later, Maggie’s lazily running her fingers up and down the inside of Alex’s arm. She’s resting her head on Alex’s chest, and Alex’s skin is pleasantly warm and sticky under her ear.

“Is my earring hurting you?” she asks, mindful of the sharp metal, but Alex is shaking her head.

“No.” She gathers Maggie in closer. “You’re perfect.”

Maggie lets out a big breath, her muscles finally relaxing, but then the sight of Alex’s forearm sparks a memory in her.

“That first time we met, on the promenade,” she says, careful not to tickle. “How many knives did you have?”

Alex laughs. “Really? That’s what you want to talk about right now?”

Maggie, though loathe to move, props herself up on her elbow. “I took three from you, but I think you had two more. Right?”

Alex rolls her eyes. “You need to work on your pillow talk, Major,” but she’s smiling.

Maggie considers grappling the answer out of her, but then she remembers that she now has access to a much more pleasant way of eliciting a confession.

For all that she pretends to be a hardened soldier, it’s only minutes before Alex is gasping under her. “Three more knives,” she breathes. “ _Please_ , Mags. Three more.”

Maggie grins into her skin, careful to leave a bite and a sharp pinch with her fingers.

“No weapons on the promenade, Lieutenant.”

And while she’s not sure that promise that Alex gasps out would hold up in a tribunal—according to Alex’s heart rate and the amount that she’s begging, she’s in a significant amount of duress at the time—Maggie will take it.

* * *

The clean-up takes weeks. Civilians aren’t allowed back yet, so it’s just the officers. It’s nice.

Kara forces Alex and Lena to sit down and “get over it.” Lena tells Alex the truth—that Alex’s father Jeremiah had been onto Lex Luthor, so Lex kidnapped Kara to drive him mad. When that didn’t work, he had Jeremiah killed, and Lillian Luthor covered it up.

“I don’t blame Lena for any of it,” Kara says firmly, and she’s holding onto Lena’s hand with a pressure that Maggie recognizes from how Alex grasps hers, sometimes, and she starts to wonder. “And I wish you wouldn’t either.”

And Alex says, “We’ll see,” but she stays for three more drinks, and she lets her body melt into Maggie’s on the couch, and Maggie crosses that off her list of things to worry about.

* * *

A junk trader pays Alex a pittance of gold-pressed latinum for the rust bucket ship they arrived in. The small ship underneath, held with a tractor beam, finds a home in one of the station’s cargo bays. Kara can often be found sitting inside of it, remembering her Kryptonian family. It’s one of the last surviving Kryptonian ships, she says, or maybe the last. It’s the ship she had escaped the planet on. The ship the Daxamites had pulled her out of. The last place she saw her family alive.

It’s the ship Alex rescued her in.

Maggie understands, now, why they would have diverted so much power to their tractor beam, risking losing life support, on their desperate dash across the gamma quadrant. If Bajor had fallen, she’d have done exactly the same thing.

Maggie helps Kara set up a shrine to the gods of Krypton in the communal temple, right next to the temple of the Prophets on the promenade.

* * *

Word comes from Starfleet, the day before civilians can return. Alex is reinstated as a Starfleet officer, although she’s been demoted to the rank of Ensign for defecting. She’s assigned to Deep Space Nine as a tactical officer. She starts wearing the little Starfleet pajama uniform with the red shoulders and one pip on her collar, and Maggie mocks her for weeks.

* * *

* * *

Three months after the Daxamite invasion, Maggie takes Alex down to Bajor again. They don’t go to the capital this time, not to any of the popular spots with tourists. Maggie rents a shuttle and takes Alex to a nondescript part of the flatlands.

She lands and they get out of the shuttle, and Maggie leads Alex across the meadow. It’s beautiful here, now. Quiet and green, lush and full of possibility.

“This is where our camp was, when I joined the resistance,” Maggie says, not even looking at Alex. “I grew up in the refugee camp, but I joined Shakar’s resistance cell when I was twelve. When I think of my home, I think of this place.”

Alex doesn’t need her to say the rest of it out loud. She’s heard the stories, now. Some of them, anyway. She knows this is where Maggie’s father died. Where she took her first lover. Where she was toasted after her first kill. Where she was given the earring she still wears, formed from the hull of ship whose pilot she killed on that first day when she transformed from child to soldier.

Alex simply folds her legs under herself, sitting down in the grass and looking out over the meadow.

“It’s beautiful,” she says, and Maggie sits down with her and watches the moons rise.

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading and being here, friends! Make sure to pop over to [@IronicPotential](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ironicpotential/pseuds/ironicpotential)'s [work](https://t.co/0cIKwAI5U9?amp=1) to admire the NINE AMAZING ILLUSTRATIONS SHE MADE FOR THIS WORK!!


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